American Jewishamericanjewisharchives.org/journal/PDF/1990_42_01_00.pdfVolume XLII Spring/Summer,...

Volume XLII Spring/Summer, 1990 Number I

American Jewish Archives

A Journal Devoted to the Preservation and Study of the American Jewish Experience

Jacob Rader Marcus, Ph.D., Editor Abraham J. Peck, Ph.M., Managing Editor

Ruth L. Kreimer, Editorial Associate

Published by The American Jewish Archives on the Cincinnati Campus of the

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, President

American Jewish Archives is indexed in The Index to Jewish Periodicals, Current Contents, The American Historical Review, United States Political Science Documents, and The Journal of American History

Information for Contributors: American Jewish Archives follows generally the University of Chicago Press "Manual of Style" (12th revised edition) and "Words into Type" (3rd edition), but issues its own style sheet which may be obtained by writing to: The Managing Editor, American Jewish Archives 3 101 Clifton Avenue Cincinnati, Ohio 4 5 ~ 2 0

Patrons 1990: The Neumann Memorial Publication Fund

Published by The American Jewish Archives on the Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

ISSN ooz-go5X Ox990 by the American Jewish Archives

Contents

7 Anti-Semitism in the Academy:

Jewish Learning in American Universities, I 9 14-193 9 Harold S . Wechsler

The existence of hundreds of courses in Judaic studies that are offered at American universities and colleges is today perceived as a given. Harold Wechsler's essay demonstrates that the path to such a comfortable current state of affairs was a long and often difficult one.

2 3 Hebrew at the Early Colleges:

Orations at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia Shalom Goldman

The State of Israel has proclaimed 1990 as "Hebrew Language Year;" marking the centenary of the revival of spoken Hebrew in what was then known as Palestine. Interestingly, spoken Hebrew was a part of American college life as early as the colonial period. Shalom Goldman provides evidence that Hebrew was included in the trio of "classical" languages that were used in orations at America's oldest and best- known institutions of higher education.

27 Jewish Internees in the American South, 1942-1945

Harvey Strum

The historical record has already revealed the American State Depart- ment's reluctance to grant asylum to Jewish refugees from Nazi Eu- rope. Harvey Strum's disturbing essay demonstrates that this reluctance and this anti-Jewish bias extended to those Jewish refugees un- fortunate enough to be ludicrously labeled as "enemy aliens" and detained in American internment camps.

49 American Jewish Personalities

Dr. Samuel James Meltzer: Physiologist of the Rockefeller Institute

Adolph Meltzer

5 7 The Sephardic Immigrant from Bulgaria:

A Personal Profile of Moise Gadol Albert J. Amateau

71 Rethinking the American Jewish Experience

The American Synagogue World of Yesterday, 1901-1925

Herman Eliot Snyder

79 An Unpublished Letter from Mordecai Kaplan to Martin Weitz

Book Reviews

8 5 Brinner, William M., and Moses Rischin, Edited by. Like All the Nations? The

Life and Legacy of ]udah L. Magnes Reviewed by Michael J. Cohen

8 5 Greenberg, Simon, Edited by. The Ordination of Women as Rabbis:

Studies and Responsa Reviewed by Judith A. Bluestein

88 Niers, Gert. Frauen schreiben im Exil

Reviewed by Ruth Schwertfeger

92 Panitz, Esther L. Simon Wolf: Private Conscience and Public Image

Reviewed by Allan Spetter

9 5 Trahtemberg Siederer, Leon. La Inmigracion Judia a1 Peru, 1848-1948

Reviewed by Anton Rosenthal

99 Jeansonne, Glen. Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate

Reviewed by Richard V. Pierard

103 Brief Notices

107 Selected Aquisitions

Harry A. Wolfson (1887-1974)

Anti-Semitism in the Academy: Jewish Learning in American

Universities, 19 14-1939 Harold S. Wechsler

The history of twentieth-century American higher education rings with laments that, at some usually unspecified time in the past, things were better. During this fictive Golden Age, the quality of students, faculty, scholarship, and even physical surroundings surpassed present-day conditions. Of course, memories are selective. Those who utter such laments rarely remember the worst students or the worst dissertations from their personal Golden Age, comparing instead the best of the past with the entirety of the present. Underlying this nostal- gia is an image of an academy that was once smaller, more selective, more elite, and, for some, more Christian.

Practitioners of Jewish learning in American universities during the interwar period uttered similar laments. Morris Jastrow, who taught Semitics a t the University of Pennsylvania for more than forty years, noted in 1919,

The preponderance of the natural sciences in this country at the present time is such that even among educated persons those who devote their careers to the old "Humanities" are looked upon as "back numbers," left over from a passing generation, while those who choose such outlandish subjects as Assyrian or Arabic or Sanskrit or Persian are regarded in the light of intellectual freaks.

But as opposed to the general laments, Jewish learning between the wars exhibits objective evidence of decline. "During the last decade," Jastrow continued, "no chairs for Semitics or Sanskrit have been established at our Universities, and very few during the past two decades."'

The Early Years

Jewish learning entered the American university during the late nineteenth century, a period of university growth, usually within Semitics departments. The field took hold at six nascent universities: Harvard,

Jacob H. Schiff (1847-1920)

Anti-Semitism in the Academy 9

Columbia, the University of California, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania. These institutions were receptive because the introduction of Semitic philology increased the number of disciplines represented in their curriculum, and because each institution wished to increase ties with its local Jewish community-especially the assimilated Reform elements. Such ties enabled liberal Protestants to show that traditional links between specific de- nominations and colleges had diminished, and that their true constituency was the entire populace.

Reform Jews and reform Protestants, to use historian Richard Storr's phrase, also had common intellectual enemies: extreme forms of the higher criticism on the one hand and fundamentalism on the other.2 Liberals had to demonstrate that abandoning a literal acceptance of the Bible did not imply the automatic acceptability of any interpretation offered by a "higher critic." Liberals also tried to show that recent scientific discoveries, especially the theory of evolution, could be reconciled with religion. The time could not have been better for cooperation. Jewish learning entered American higher education at a time of optimism about the future of the university and of Ameri- can Judaism, and about the prospects for a successful encounter between the two.

A regression set in after World War I. Johns Hopkins almost replaced a Semitics program that contained a strong Jewish component with a law institute in 1926. Columbia's Richard Gottheil, appointed in 1886, remained the sole Semitics professor for most of his fifty-year tenure. The University of California's appointment of William Popper, a Jewish student of Richard Gottheil, to a Semitics post in 1906 was its last for many years.' Chicago started in 1892 with Emil G. Hirsch, rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation. Despite several opportunities to change that pattern, Jewish learning at Chicago remained a part-time activity conducted by the rabbi of Chicago Sinai congregation until World War 11. Pennsylvania took many years to follow the appointments of Morris Jastrow (1886) and Isaac Husik ( I ~ o s ) . ~ Indeed, during the mid-~gzos, Harvard and Columbia unenthusiastically accepted two unsolicited endowments that rescued Jewish learning from near-disappearance at the founding institutions.

What caused this decline? Jastrow and his contemporaries correctly noted that the humanities did not fare well during this period. But by

Elliot Cohen (1899-1959)

Anti-Semitism in the Academy I I

most measures, the humanities in general fared better than Semitics and Jewish learning in particular. A better explanation is that the initial reception and the subsequent decline of Jewish learning were strongly conditioned by majority attitudes about the people represented by that learning, and by the role of knowledge in legitimating the place of Jews in the university and in American life.

Developments at Harvard

The fate of the Harvard Semitics department and of Harry Wolfson's first sixteen years at Harvard (1909-1925) are cases in point. In 1880, President Charles William Eliot appointed Crawford Howell Toy to a professorship in the newly-created Semitics department. Toy, who had run afoul of the Baptists for "heretical" thinking, recruited his student David Gordon Lyon for another faculty position. The two professors became the department's mainstays until Toy's retirement in 19 10 and Lyon's in 1922. In 1905, Harvard added George Foot Moore. Moore is frequently acknowledged to have opened talmudic scholarship to Gentiles. The staff also included an Egyptologist and an Arabist.

In 1888, financier Jacob Schiff became interested in the Semitics department, and began a series of donations for constructing and equipping a Semitics Museum. Schiff's contributions continued for over twenty years. Schiff's friendships with Lyon, Toy, and especially President Eliot prompted him to subvent the department and museum. So did his interest in sponsoring a Harvard archaeological expedition to Palestine. By 1910, Harvard could look back on twenty years of growth in Semitics that resulted in important scholarly works and significant archaeological finds."

All this changed once Abbott Lawrence Lowell assumed the Har- vard presidency in 1909. From the outset, Lowell acted antagonisti- cally towards the Semitics department. The president diverted a Schiff endowment from the Semitics department to the Divinity School to fund a New Testament scholar. Lowell committed no new university funds to Semitics; nor did he allow the department to raise money on its own. "To state the case mildly," Lyon wrote ruefully after his retirement, "no favors may be expected from the present administration." Schiff easily sensed Lowell's hostility. His contributions dwindled and soon ended completely.

12 American Jewish Archives

Within a few years a once significant department found itself in a marginal position within the university. Broad considerations, such as society's "secularization," the onset of World War I, the resultant New England economic dislocations, and the intellectual preeminence of other university departments, explain some of Semitics' loss of status. Yet, the department's emphasis on Judaic Semitics, for example, the Palestine expedition, Moore's scholarship, and courses on Judaic top- ics, and its strong identification with Schiff, who, for all his prominence, remained a first-generation Jew with an accent, did not help in an era of increased anti-immigrant bias and anti-Semitism.

Shortly after Schiff's death, Lyon suggested that the museum host a small ceremony to honor its benefactor, and to exhibit a portrait Schiff had reluctantly sat for almost twenty years earlier on the stipulation that it not be displayed in his lifetime. Lowell tersely vetoed the sugges- t i ~ n . ~

The Corporation felt that another celebration in connection with the exhibition of the portrait of Mr. Schiff would not be appropriate. The portrait is not for the first time presented to us, but has been in our possession all along; only in accordance with the desires of Mr. Schiff has it not been publicly shown.'

Seeking consolation, Lyon called upon Eliot. When he returned home, he wrote in his diary:

Told E. about Lowell's opposition to any celebration in connection with placing of Schiff's portrait on exhibition and about his continued opposition to efforts to raise money for the Sem. Museum. He says both acts spring from Lowell's fear of the Jews and his hostility to them8

A few months later, Lowell precipitated a major debate over Harvard's "Jewish problem," and David Gordon Lyon led the opposition. Harry Wolfson's career was not unaffected by these developments.

Harry Wolfson came to Harvard at the urging of his high school principal in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He had previously studied in Russian yeshivot and at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Seminary in New York (later part of Yeshiva University). At Harvard, Wolfson quickly impressed Lyon, who arranged for a scholarship underwritten by Schiff, and later for a travelling fellowship.

Anti-Semitism in the Academy 1 3

When Wolfson returned from Europe and defended his thesis in 19 I 5 , he began a decade as a marginal instructor at Harvard, always supported by communal contributions, and always on short-term contracts, renewed on very short notice. Lowell's adamant refusal to expend institutional resources on Wolfson's salary, and Wolfson's inability to obtain funds for publication of his thesis led him to despair of a permanent appointment. Indeed, he did not know that George ~ o o t Moore had obtained a three-year appointment for him in 1921 only on condition that at the end of the period he would not be reap- pointed.

In 1923, Stephen Wise's newly opened Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City offered to assure Wolfson's salary while splitting his services with Harvard. J.I.R. and Harvard would each have had the right to terminate the agreement on short notice. This arrangement would probably have gone on for a few years, after which either J.I.R. would have asked Wolfson to make a choice or Harvard would have ended the agreement. But the endowment of a chair in Jewish philosophy by Lucius Littauer, a Harvard alumnus, former congressman, prominent businessman, and Reform Jew, enabled Wolfson to return to Harvard full-time, where he remained for his entire career.

Jews and Higher Education

To place these events at Harvard in the context of the history of Jewish learning in American universities and colleges, we must first ask what the Jewish community saw in higher education. The answel; in a word, was recognition. In his introduction to the I 905 Jewish Encyclopedia, editor Joseph Jacobs wrote:

The impression that the Jews are a mysterious sect like the Gypsies and that their conduct is inspired by unsocial motives must disappear before the evidence presented in the Encyclopedia that they are men like other men, with their prejudices and feelings indeed, but also with their ideals which later are seen to be in most cases the foundations of the ideals of h ~ m a n i t y . ~

The Jewish community willingly supported academic innovation in general; Jewish learning in the hands of Wolfson and his colleagues demonstrated its value to a larger world that had heretofore rejected or ignored it. Individual Jews could advance knowledge in many

14 American Jewish Archives emerging disciplines, sometimes by emphasizing Judaic aspects of their subject that their colleagues neglected. In return, American Jews asked for an important intangible: recognition of their scholars, their learning, and their previous and potential social contributions. Whether scholarship and associated activities could effectively secure communal recognition was an open question. But both Judaica scholars and their communal supporters believed support of this field of learning was a promising strategy for group betterment, a not unlikely belief in an era that placed a premium on rational solutions to social problems.

By the 192os, it became clear that American Jewry had emerged as a viable social and political force-and unanimous joy did not exist at this prospect. Some believed that Jewish gains came at a cost to other groups. Others felt that immigration, especially Jewish immigration, had produced an unassimilable population with values and traditions alien to American practice. American Jews therefore constituted a threat-a problem to be reckoned with.

The Jewish Problem

Indeed, a curious debate took place among university-associated Gen- tiles. The debate was not over the existence of a "Jewish problemv- all agreed that there was one-but over its origins. Some, such as Columbia College Dean Frederick P. Keppel(19 10-1 91 8) , postulated that the individual characteristics of some Jews created a "problem," and that one could distinguish between "desirable" and "undesirable" Jews in student admission and faculty appointments. "Jews who have had the advantage of decent social surroundings for a generation or two [usually German Jews] are entirely satisfactory companions," he wrote in I 9 I 5 . The more recent arrivals (usually those from East Europe) who by hard work and sacrifice had academically prepared themselves might create problems. In public, Keppel stated that universities had a responsibility to accord such Jews access and perhaps to help them overcome "undesirable traits."1° In private, Keppel and other Columbia authorities experimented with measures to limit their numbers."

Others began with a different postulate-that Jews as a group posed a "problem" apart from any member's individual characteris-

Anti-Semitism in the Academy 1 S tics. "Jews form a distinct body, and cling, or are drawn, together," asserted Abbott Lawrence Lowell. To Lowell, the recent growth in Harvard's Jewish constituency raised the fear that "where Jews become numerous they drive off other people and then leave themselves."12 He had little interest in the source of this phenomenon, whether it was Gentile prejudice, Jewish "c1annishness," or a combination. Nor did he contemplate whether the group traits he perceived resulted from heredity or environment, whether Jews were a "race," and whether the passage of time could eliminate "Jewish traits." These issues proved too abstract for Lowell's world of alumni, parent, student, and faculty concern.13 Jews as a group constituted a "threat"; if they ceased to do so in the future, Harvard could reconsider its contemplated restrictions upon Jewish access.14

Such reasoning, as Lyon's diary entry indicates, may have been dis- ingenuous. But it posed a grave challenge to those who insisted that the results of Jewish scholarship would undermine precisely the prejudices, fears, and stereotypes expressed by Lowell and thereby improve the lot of American Jews. Indeed, some of the strongest reactions against the Jewish presence in higher education occurred in institutions that heretofore had welcomed them (Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins). Decades of attempts to explain Jews and Judaism to the Gentile world appeared, for reasons not fully fathomed, to have gone for naught. The universalism characteristic of American Reform Jews, a stance appropriate in the late-nineteenth-century era of liberal religion and social melioration, appeared unreciprocated and indeed ir- relevant to the post-World War I situation.

The encounters of Jacob Schiff and Harry Wolfson with Harvard illustrated the diminished expectations for Jews and Jewish learning in American universities. Indeed, the prospect of general adversity may have prompted interested Jews, such as Judge Julian Mack, to place a high priority upon retaining Jewish learning at Harvard-a prestigious and influential institution whose founding had antedated that of the American republic by a century and a half. Regarded by James Bryce as the most famous university on the North American conti- nent,15 Harvard bestowed instant and undisputable legitimacy on all associated with it-a fact well-known to both Jacob Schiff and Harry Wolfson. And as a multi-constituency-even a national-institution with sufficient resources to permit retention of marginal subjects,

16 American Jewish Archives Harvard's bestowals could, indeed had to, depend on more than the prejudices of any one man--even its president. The Littauer chair was not part of an inexorable progression of Jewish learning into the universities, as some would have it, but an exception to a general trend better typified by Wolfson's first decade than by his subsequent tenure.

Jewish Responses

Let us summarize the change that took place along with the rise of anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century, and then examine the Jewish response. At the end of the nineteenth century, about fifteen American universities plus several theological schools offered significant work in Semitics; some granted the Ph.D. Jews comprised a good- ly proportion of Semitics practitioners. While the number of Semitists remained relatively small as compared to practitioners in other fields, they at least commanded sufficient resources to assure a presence for the subject. Reform Jewish enthusiasm for the university movement in general and Semitics in particular reflected satisfaction with American customs and institutions as such and as a fulfillment of the ideal of Wissenschaft des Judentums (the movement among liberal European Jews for the "scientific" study of Judaism). Chicago rabbis Bernhard Felsenthal and Emil G. Hirsch went so far as to view the American university as a possible substitute for a Jewish seminary.

By 1920, few exhibited such enthusiasm. "The influences about American universities do not seem somehow altogether favorable to the Jewish ministry," wrote one commentator. "Experience would not warrant the Jewish people disbanding their special rabbinical courses in dependence upon Semitics departments of unive~sities."'~ The heightened anti-Semitism that replaced the philo-Semitism of the late nineteenth century raised questions of university support. Post-World War I presidents perceived less intellectual urgency for the subject, lacked their predecessors' concern for Jews, and were self-conscious budget-balancers, not entrepreneurial intellectuals. They offered neither personal support nor financial resources to Semitics in general and especially to any distinguishable Jewish slant.

how eve^; the lack of such support was not in itself always fatal." Even at Harvard, where Lowell mobilized substantial resources in the

Anti-Semitism in the Academy 1 7

battle to restrict admission of Jewish students, he probably assured that Jewish learning would fade with Lyon's and Moore's retirements. Harry Wolfson's academic fate was not a major preoccupation. If Wolfson had left Harvard, precisely such an erosion would have taken place. However, confronted with the Littauer endowment, Lowell could do little but accept.

In the ninetenth century, Wissenschaft des Judentums failed to attain university acceptance anywhere in Germany.Is But contemporary American Jews, well aware of that story, optimistically emphasized the differences between the German and American situations-ape- cially the admittance of Jewish learning and Jewish instructors at American institutions of higher learning. By the 19zos-faced with heightened Gentile hostility that translated into discrimination in faculty hiring and student admission-advocates of Jewish learning in American universities replaced their unrealistic aspirations with greater pragmatism. Short-run increases in Judaic representation appeared unlikely. At best, the field might maintain its current level of offerings. And in an institution whose president viewed the "problem" in group terms, anyone who "representedm-and desired recognition of-the beliefs of the "distinctive" group would experience substantial difficulty. During the 19zos Jewish learning ran a real danger of becoming, to use Menorah Journal writer Elliot Cohen's terms, little more than "a minor section of Semitic linguistics" or a "pre- Christian culture, interesting in the Biblical aspects and Christian relations, confined to Palestine; post-Biblical developments ignored."19

Practitioners of Jewish learning generally responded to their field's diminished position within the university by developing an activist, internally oriented scholarly agenda. "If I am not for myself," wrote Professor Israel Friedlaender of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 19 14, quoting Hillel's dictum, "who is for myself?" And, he continued, "If not now, when then?" Friedlaender's was the first of many discussions of Jewish learning to emphasize its potentially salutary effects on issues internal to the American Jewish community. Specifi- cally, he accorded Jewish learning high strategic importance in dealing with the questions Jews and Judaism had to confront as a result of mass Jewish migration to America.

But if the predominant tone of Friedlaender's remarks emphasized the internals, it did so as a corrective to a perceived overemphasis on

I 8 American Iewish Archives the universal by Jewish Semitists and the Jewish community. Fried- laender's ultimate stance was mediative.1° A culture's intellectual pre- occupations, he argued, ultimately arise out of its immediate concerns: intellectuals will seek answers outside the context of Judaism if necessary, but given the traditional importance of scholarship in Jew- ish life, Jewish scholars could participate in the general discourse, offering solutions compatible with Judaism's essential tenet^.^' Uni- versity-based advocates of Jewish learning echoed these sentiments for many decades.

Developments Since World War I1

The anti-Semitism of the interwar years in Europe and America did not result in abandonment of the universalistic aspects of Jewish learning. New York University's offerings in Jewish learning just after World War I1 included modern Hebrew language and. literature. At the time, many of these works were by Zionists, and about Zionism and Palestine. In enumerating the advantages of these offerings, Professor Abraham I. Katsh listed "the great contribution of Judaism to West- ern civilization and American dernocra~y."~~

Similarly, Cecil Roth, a British historian of Jewry, wrote while in America that serious study of Jewish history would serve a host of internal needs. "It is for him [the Jew] not merely a record; it is at once an inspiration and an apologia," he insisted. "It is only from an appre- ciation of his past that he can be imbued with self-respect and hope for his future." However, his ultimate stance resembled Friedlaender's. "It will not only reestablish decent Jewish pride and inspire the world at last with true respect, but will be a significant and absorbing contribution to universal history, an intellectual achievement of vast importance. "23

The field of Jewish learning responded to heightened anti-Semitism with formulations that emphasized Jewish distinctiveness in a plural- istic framework. These formulations replaced more general and universalist agendas for Jewish learning that failed to forestall enmity, much less gain "recognition." Subjects that appeared between the wars as candidates for college and university inclusion, such as modern Hebrew and Jewish history, were identifiably Jewish. These subjects held greater appeal for the undergraduate Jewish constituency

Anti-Semitism in the Academy 19

than did courses in Semitic philology. Their backers found it difficult to gain footholds for them in the curriculum because they appeared too "narrow," and because of continued discrimination against Jew- ish faculty, students, and potential students.

By the 1970s and 1980s, most discrimination had ended and Jewish learning could be found at hundreds of colleges and universities. The trends toward undergraduate offerings, modern rather than biblical Hebrew, the social sciences, and broader rather than deeper courses continued. If pre-World War I Jewish scholarship may be classified as predominantly "universalist," and interwar scholarship as predominantly "pluralist," that is, looking outward and inward at the same time, then recent Jewish scholarship contains a strong element of "parti~ularism."~~ The word "particularism" carries pejorative overtones. There are not many academic rewards for "narrow" scholarship, although what is considered "narrow" in one field may be acceptable in another. But in the case of Jewish learning the field's history provides reasons for particularism's prominence. Earlier in this century, pressure from Harvard alumni reinforced the proclivities of Harvard authorities to limit the presence of Jewish learning and the number of Jewish faculty and students. The rejection of universalistic claims made for Jewish learning and the inability of graduate students trained during the interwar years to find university positions may have affected subsequent generations of Judaica scholars.

So too may have changes in the Jewish community. Assimilation, upward mobility, and economic prosperity brought a new communal agenda to the fore. By the I ~ ~ O S , American Jewry concerned itself more with the contributions that Jewish learning could make to assur- ing communal survival than with recognition from Gentiles. This concern implied an inward-looking agenda for Judaica practitioners.

Indeed, the self-perceived status of Jews in American society likely will continue to predict the orientation of Jewish learning within American universities.

Notes

I . Morris Jastrow, "Supplementary Account of Thirty Years Progress in Semitic Studies, and Discussion of Dr. Peters' Paper," in Roland G. Kent, ed., Thirty Years of Orienral Studies Issued

20 American Jewish Archives in Commemoration of Thirty Years of Activity of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia (Philadel- phia: Intelligencer Printing Co., 1918), pp. 67, 69.

2. Richard Storr, Harper's University: The Beginnings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1966)~ PP. 39-40. 3. See Harold S. Wechsler, "Community and Academy: Jewish Learning at the University of

California, I 870-1920," Western States lewish History 18 (January 1986): I 3 1-142 4. See Harold S. Wechsler, "Pulpit or Professoriate: The Case of Morris Jastrow,"American

Jewish History 74 (June 1985): 538-555, and Paul Ritterband and Harold S. Wechsler, "A Message to Lushtamar: The Hilprecht Controversy and Semitic Scholarship in America," Histo- ry of Higher Education Annual I (1981): 5-41.

5. Schiff was probably disappointed when the most important discovery on the Samaria expedition turned out to be the palace of Ahab.

6. David Gordon Lyon, "Relations of Jacob Schiff to Harvard University," David Gordon Lyon Papers, Harvard University Archives (hereafter HUA), HUG 1541.30, pp. 23-24,

7. Lowell to Lyon, December I, 1921, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Papers, HUA (1919-19~2), file 791: "Jacob H. Schiff." On this occasion Lowell also vetoed Lyon's request to embark on a fund-raising drive. On the Semitic Museum's current status, see Janet Tassel, "The Semitic Muse- um Rises Again," Harvard Magazine 84 (MarchlApril, 1982): 40-46. See also Nitza Rosovsky, ed., Thelewish Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe: An Introduction to an Exhibition (Cam- bridge: Harvard University, 1986).

8. David Gordon Lyon Journals, January 8, 1922, HUA, HUG 1541.10. 9. Joseph Jacobs, Thelewish Encyclopedia: A Guide to Its Contents, an Aid to Its Use (New

York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906), p. 139. 10. Frederick Paul Keppel, Columbia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1914), pp.

179-1 80, and idem, The Undergraduate and His College (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), pp. 81-84.

I I. See Harold S. Wechsler, The Qualified Student: A History of Selective College Admission in America (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1977)~ chap. 7.

12. Lowell to W. E. Hocking, May 19, 1922, Abbott L. Lowell Papers, HUA, file 1056, "Jews," and Henry Aaron Yeomans, Abbott Lawence Lowell, 1856-1943 (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, r948), pp. 210-212. See also Harold S. Wechsler, "An Academic Gresham's Law: Group Repulsion in American Higher Education," Teachers College Record 88 (Summer 1981): 567-588.

13. The literature on Jews as a race was voluminous at the time. See especially Irwin Edman, "Race and Culture," Menorah Journal 10 (November 1924): 421-427; Charles W. Eliot, "The Potency of the Jewish Race," ibid. I (June 1915): 141-144, Alexander A. Goldenweiser, "Con- cerning 'Racial Differences,"' ibid. 9 (October 1922): 309-316, and A. L. Kroeber, "Are the Jews a Race?" ibid. 3 (December 1917): 290-294.

14. See Harold S. Wechsler, "The Rationale for Restriction: Ethnicity and College Admission in America 1910-1980,'' American Quarterly 36 (Winter 1984): 643-667. In line with this reasoning, Lowell proposed restrictions upon the total number of Jews admitted to Harvard (called, wrote his biographer, "by Jewish writers a numerus clausus" or quota) irrespective of the individual qualities of those admitted. (See Yeomans, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, pp. 209-217, quotation from p. 212.)

15. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, ed. L. M. Hacker, vol. z (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1g59), p. 461.

16. "Development and Influence of Jewish Jurisprudence,"Jewish Exponent, January 19, 1906.

Anti-Semitism in the Academy 2 I

17. See "Locating a Rabbinical Institute," ibid., January 5, 1906. 18. And worse, some used the movement's findings as weapons against Judaism and European

Jewry. See Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870-1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), passim.

19. Elliot Cohen, undated memorandum, attached to Henry Hunvitz to Nathan Isaacs, May 26, 1926, Menorah Collection, American Jewish Archives, microfilm 2083. Cohen partially blamed the Reform rabbinate for the field's truncation even in those Semitics departments that transcended philology. "Judaism considered-thanks to these reform rabbis-as a religion entirely and to be studied only for its religious implication."

20. In comparing American Jewry to Spanish Jewry a millennium before, he noted a characteristic in the latter which he termed a desideratum for the former, "its close and intimate association with the general culture of the age on the one hand, and on the other, its ability to preserve and develop its distinct Jewish character and to sink deeply into the hearts and minds of the Jewish people."

21. Israel Friedlaender, "The Function of Jewish Learning in America," Jewish Theological Seminary Association of America Student's Annual, 1914 (New York: Isaac Goldmann Co., 1914), pp. 124-137, quotation from pp. 137, 128.

22. Abraham I. Katsh, "The Teaching of Hebrew in American Universities," Modern Lan- guage Journal 30 (December 1946): 586. See also idem, Hebrew in American Higher Education (New York: New York University Bookstore, 1941); idem, "Modern Hebrew in American Col- leges and Universities,"Modern Language Journal 3 5 (January 1951): 3-6; and idem, "Hebrew Studies in American Higher Education: An Evaluation of Current Trends," Jewish Social Studies 21 (January 1959): 15-21.

23. Cecil Roth, "Jewish History for Our OwnNeeds," Menorah Journal 14 (May 1928): 419,

434. 24. See Harold S. Wechsler and Paul Ritterband, "Jewish Learning in American Universities:

The Literature of a Field,"Modern Judaism 3 (October 1983): 253-289.

Harold S. Wechsler is Associate Professor of Education at the School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University. Among his many publications is The Qualified Student: A History of Selective College Admission in America (1977).

Hebrew at the Early Colleges: Orations at Harvard, Dartmouth, and

Columbia Shalom Goldman

Along with Greek and Latin, the primary "learned languages" of the European humanist tradition, Hebrew was taught at the American colleges founded before the Revolution.' As in Europe, where university instruction in Hebrew began at the University of Paris in the thir- teenth century, commencement orations were delivered in the ancient t0ngues.l Not surprisingly, most commencement addresses were delivered in Greek and Latin, but investigation of college histories indicates that a number of them were presented in Hebrew.

The purpose of the "inceptio," as the commencement exercise was known in medieval Europe, was to demonstrate acceptance into the guild of teachers and mastery of the languages of learning.3 The speech was often written by the school's professor (or professors) of languages, and memorized by one of his more promising pupils. At Ox- ford and Cambridge, and later at the "American Cambridge," Har- vard, the tradition continued. At the 1685 Harvard College commencement exercises, four orations were delivered: one in Latin, two in Greek, and one in Hebrew. The Hebrew speaker was Nathaniel Mather, the sixteen-year-old son of the college's newly appointed president, Increase Mather.4 Nathaniel died only four years later, at the age of twenty. After his death, making reference to the notion popular among Puritans "that they would heard Hebrew upon entering the gates of heaven,"' Cotton Mather, Nathaniel's older brother, wrote of him that "the Hebrew language was become so familiar with him, as if he had apprehended it should quickly become the only language which he should have occasion for."6

At Yale, founded in 1718, and then at Dartmouth, established by graduates of Yale in 1769, Hebrew was a central (if unpopular) component of the curriculum. There are records of seven Hebrew orations being delivered at Dartmouth commencements.' They seem to have

24 American Jewish Archives been written by John Smith, "Professor of English, Latin, Greek, He- brew, and Chaldee." Though Smith demonstrated considerable knowledge of Hebrew in his Hebrew Grammar, Without Points, De- signed to Facilitate the Study of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, in the Original,8 his command of the language did not extend to matters of composition. The oration in 1799 was delivered by Jacob Patch, who went on to study medicine and later settled in Maine as a physi- ~ i a n . ~

The address written by Smith, with its awkward syntax and lack of compositional unity, stands in sharp contrast to an oration given a year later at the 1800 Columbia College commencement exercises. This speech was written by Gershom Mendes Seixas, chazan of the Shearith Israel Congregation of New York City and a trustee of Co- lumbia College.l0 Its style is that of the medieval rabbinic responsa, and it can be easily understood by the modern reader of Hebrew. Its content was apologetic; the oration offered a schema of American history into which the Jewish experience would fit. The Columbia oration was delivered by Sampson Simson, a Jewish student, and was titled: "Historical Traits of the Jews, from their first settlement in North America." Jacob Rader Marcus has described Sampson Sim- son's address as "the first evidence of a communal self-consciousness among American Jews." But its message was, of course, lost to the audience. To provide a translation of an oration would have destroyed the charming illusion that the assembled knew the learned languages."

The 1799 Dartmouth oration had no such clearly defined theme, and was, rather; a vague exhortation to lead the good life and avoid the pitfalls of evil. It was composed of a pastiche of words and short phrases, many of them from the Bible, especially Proverbs and the Psalms, with some additional words and phrases culled from the He- brew of the Mishnah.12

The text of the oration opens with a reminder that "the wise man will perform all of his deeds on the straight path, though the scoun- drels would want him to stray down wayward paths." He should avoid evildoers and their follies, and show contempt for their unjust deeds.

This opening is followed by an awkwardly constructed Hebrew paraphrase of the Christian maxim "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," adding, "Only in this will you find righteous-

Hebrew at the Early Colleges 2 5 ness: in bringing joy to others. But many of the people follow their passions rather than their reason and thus bring misfortune to all men." The oration closes with an often-quoted verse from Eccle- siastes, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (Eccles. I 2: I 3 , King James Version).

The tradition of Hebrew orations at Dartmouth continued sporadi- cally until the untimely demise of Professor Smith in I 809. At Harvard the Hebrew orations were a part of the commencement exercises until 1817, when they were discontinued.13 With the decline of interest in the learned languages and the shift away from the "canonical" texts of the humanistic tradition, the study of Hebrew in colleges declined.I4 It was to experience a renewed interest in the mid-nineteenth century, when William Rainey Harper, originally professor of Hebrew at Yale, and later president of the University of Chicago, embarked on a program to introduce the study of the Hebrew language throughout the United States.15

Notes

I. For a survey of Hebrew studies in early American colleges, see S. Baron, "From Colonial Mansion to Skyscraper: An Emerging Pattern of Hebraic Studies," in Steeled by Adversity: Essays and Addresses on American Iewish Life (Philadelphia, 1971).

2. Encyclopaedia ]udaica (Jerusalem, 1972), s.v. "Christian Hebraism." 3. S. E. Morison, The Founding of Haward (Cambridge, Mass., r g j ~ ) , pp. 12-13. 4. D. de Sola Pool, "Hebrew Learning Among the Puritans of New England Prior to 1700,"

Publications of the American Iewish Historical Society 20 (191 I): 5 5. 5. For example, E B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York, I ~ O I ) , vol. 3, p.

306. 6. Pool, "Hebrew Learning Among the Puritans," p. 56. "Before Nathaniel Mather completed

his twentieth year, overstudy, added to the austere self-mortification and morbid religious tor- ture which he practiced on himself, brought on his death."

7. Dartmouth College, Special Collections. 8. Boston College, 1803. 9. G. Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College (Cambridge, Mass., 1867). 10. I. Meyer, "Sampson Simson's Hebrew Oration, 1800," Publications of the American

Iewish Historical Society 37 (1947): 430-433. 11. J. R. Marcus, Studies in Americanlewish History 37 (1960): 231. For further comments

on Simson's oration, see J. Kabakoff, "Hebrew Culture and Creativity in America," Iudaism 3

(1954): 394.

2 6 American Jewish Archives 12. On the knowledge of Rabbinic Hebrew among Christian Hebraists, see C. E. Schertz,

"Christian Hebraism in 17th Century England as Reflected in the Works of John Lightfoot" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1977), pp. 19-21.

13. For a survey of Harvard Hebraica, see 1. Meyer, "Hebrew at Harvard (1636-1760)," Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 35 (1939), and H. Wolfson, "Hebrew Books at Harvard," Harvard Alumni Bulletin, April 29, 1932.

14. On the decline of the study of Hebrew, see G. E Moore, "Alttestamentliche Studien in Amerika," Zeitschrift fuer altestamentliche Wissenschaft 3 (I 888): I I.

15. C. Adler, "Hebrew and Cognate Learning in America," Lectures, Selected Papers, Ad- dresses (Philadelphia, 1933)~ p. 286.

Shalom Goldman is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dart- mouth College. He is the organizer of a conference sponsored by the National Endownment for the Humanities entitled "Hebrew and the Bible in Colonial America: Historical, Literary and Theological As- pects."

Jewish Internees in the American South, 1942-1945

Harvey Strum

Passing the heavily guarded compound containing German and Japa- nese prisoners of war (POWs), Rabbi Israel Gerstein of Chattanooga, Tennessee, arrived at "the room where the Jews were kept. It was a moving experience-it was a Tisha B'Av mood."' This was not North Africa or liberated Europe-it was Fort Ogelthorpe, Georgia, in 1942.

Rabbi Gerstein had traveled to Fort Ogelthorpe to hold Sabbath services for a group of Jewish refugees interned as enemy aliens. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Panama and several other Latin American nations had rounded up suspected enemy aliens, including a number of Jewish refugees who had fled Germany and Austria before the outbreak of World War 11. The interned Jews were taken along with the others to the Panama Canal Zone and placed under the jurisdiction of the United States Army. In the spring of 1942, appoximate- ly sixty Jews and a much larger number of alleged German, Italian, and Japanese enemy aliens were transported to the United States for internment. Upon arrival at New Orleans, the Jewish women and children were separated from the men and sent to an internment camp at Seagoville, Texas, while the men were sent to several camps for enemy aliens and Axis POWs in the South. Altogether, 81 Jews and 4,707 enemy aliens from Latin America were interned in the United States during World War II.2

Over the next year, the Jewish men spent time in camps in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas before the military authorities decided to concentrate them at a camp in Seagoville, Texas, and then at Algiers, Louisiana. They would have remained in internment until the end of the war, but the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the National Refugee Service learned of their plight and pleaded their case to American military and civilian authorities. By the middle of I 943, the federal government reclassified most of the

28 American Jewish Archives Jews as internees-at-large who could live outside the camps for the duration.

The group from Latin America were not the only Jews interned in the United States during World War 11. One hundred German Jews living on the West Coast, like the Japanese-Americans, were forced to relocate to internment camps in 1942.~ In addition, Jews constituted 93 percent of the 982 refugees brought to the United States from Italy in 1944 and confined in the Fort Ontario Refugee Shelter at Oswego, New York, until December 1945.~ However, the focus of this article will be on the Jewish refugees from Latin America who were interned in camps in the South. Their story is one of the forgotten episodes of World War 11, and it adds to our understanding of American refugee policy during the war.

Anti-Semitism as a Factor

In the context of the widespread anti-Semitism and general indiffer- ence to the plight of European Jewish refugees before, during, and after World War 11, what was surprising was not the fact that the Jews were interned as enemy aliens, but that most of them were released in 1943 as internees-at-large. Poll taken during the war indicated that Americans mistrusted Jews more than any other European immigrant group except Italians. Between 1941 and 1945 polls suggested that only 30 percent of Americans would have voted against anti-Semitic politicians. In 1943, a poll indicated that 78 percent opposed admitting additional refugees.'

Congress, as David Wyman has pointed out in two studies, reflected the anti-refugee feelings of the American public, and refused to either alter the quotas or admit Jewish refugees outside of the existing immigration laws. Officials in the State Department, particularly Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, who headed the Visa Division, used visa regulations to limit the admission of Jews. In addition, the State Department suppressed for months the underground reports of the Holocaust. President Franklin Roosevelt contributed to the problem by refusing to challenge the immigration restrictions and by fail- ing to do anything to counter the State Department's anti-refugee poli-

Jewish Internees in the American South 29 cies until January 1944, when he established the War Refugee Board (WRB). The president established the WRB primarily because of a report detailing the State Department's anti-refugee policies that was drafted by members of the staff of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. Bowing to prejudice and political expediency, as he had with the internment of the Japanese-Americans, Roosevelt permitted the establishment of only one refugee camp in the United States, Fort Ontario, and confined the 982 refugees brought there for the duration of the war. Consequently, it is not surprising that Jews were confined as enemy aliens under American jurisdiction in the Canal Zone and the South for over a year and a half.6

The Situation in Britain and Canada

The inclusion of Jewish refugees with enemy aliens was not unique to the American internment program. In fact, the number of Jews interned in the United States was small compared to those interned by the British and Canadian governments. Britain interned thousands of German and Austrian nationals, including Jews, at the beginning of the war, and then deported 2,250 enemy aliens, mainly Jews, to Cana- da. The Canadian government reluctantly accepted them, because Canada had adopted an even more restrictive refugee-admission policy than the United States. During World War 11, both the United States and Canada closed their doors to the victims of Hitler's Final Solu- t i ~ n . ~

The experiences of the Jews interned in Canada were similar to those of the internees in the United States. They were held for long periods of time, some for three and a half years, at camps in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Between May 1941 and December 1943, the Jewish internees were released, but they remained in limbo, like the American internees, until the end of the war. In fact, the Cana- dian government agreed to release the Jews only after it became apparent that the United States would not accept them because of "a hostile U.S. State De~artment ."~ In both Canada and the United States hostile government officials resisted efforts to release the internees and objected to admitting them as immigrants. Eventually, both governments allowed the internees to become immigrants.

3 0 American Jewish Archives Internments in Latin America

The internees from Latin America were brought to the United States under a program for enemy aliens established at the Conference of Foreign Ministers of the American Republics, held in Rio de Janeiro in January 1942. With the exception of Chile and Argentina, all of the Latin American nations broke relations with the Axis powers and agreed to cooperate in regard to the detention of enemy aliens. Most of the Latin American countries accepted an American offer to temporarily intern Japanese, Italian, and German enemy aliens until they could be repatriated to their countries of origin. Laws and customs in most Latin American nations permitted governments to expel aliens, and no alien had an "absolute guarantee of a right to remain."9

After December 7,1941, most Latin American nations rounded up ccdangerous" Axis nationals. In the spring of 1942, they began sending them to the United States. Most of the enemy aliens arrived via New Orleans although 525 came from Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia via San Francisco. Most Latin American nations did not round up Jews or quickly released those taken into custody, but Panama and British Honduras, because of the influence of anti-Semitic officials, proved especially eager to include Jews. Additionally, a few Jews from Bolivia, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic ended up interned.

The Special War Problems ~ iv i s ion of the State Department assumed responsibility for the program. Initially, some of the internees were housed in Army camps and POW camps in the South. Eventually, the United States established seven internment camps for civilian enemy aliens in New Mexico, Texas, Idaho, and North Dakota. Several hundred others were held at Ellis Island or in Immigration and Natu- ralization Service (INS) detention centers around the country. None of the aliens brought to the United States had the right to remain after the war. To prevent their gaining any legal rights, the State Department denied them admission visas, and the internees did not go through formal immigration procedures. Rather, as soon as they arrived they were sent to internment camps. While the State Department expected quick repatriation to their home countries, 2,100 of the 4,707 enemy aliens brought to the United States remained until the end of the war.I0

Jewish Internees in the American South Panama

The ordeal of the Jewish internees began two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl harbor; when Panama rounded up enemy aliens, including at least 250 Jewish refugees, and sent them to the Balboa Intern- ment Camp in the Panama Canal Zone, where they came under the jurisdiction of the United States Army. Unfortunately, the Panamani- an government, especially under President Arnulfo Arias (October 1 9 4 d e p t e m b e r 1941) adopted anti-Semitic policies. According to Latin American expert Richard Behrendt, fascist and anti-Semitic groups "became very powerful" in Panama. Because "some of them . . . remained in office" after the Panamanian military deposed Arias, they were in positions of power to use the outbreak of the war to harass and intern Jewish refugees." The Panamanian authorities quickly released local fascists and refugees of Czechoslovakian, Pol- ish, and Italian origin but kept German and Austrian Jews confined. In contrast, the governments of Guatemala and Costa Rica did not make mass arrests of Jewish refugees.

Most of the refugees had left Germany and Austria with their families but without funds because of German government restrictions. Some of the men had been in concentration camps. For example, Gerhard Schlesinger was arrested in 193 8 and sent to Buchenwald. He was released on the condition that he leave Germany. Because of the outbreak of the war in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, Gerhard Schlesinger and his wife, Charlotte, had to travel via the Sovi- et Union and Japan before reaching Panama in September 1940. As another example, Fred Kappel was residing in Berlin in 193 8 when the Gestapo, the Nazi secret state police, ordered him to leave Germany within a month. After going to Denmark, he obtained a visa for Pana- ma and arrived there in December 1938.12

The refugees made new lives for themselves in Latin America. Many had been professionals or businessmen in Europe, but in Panama they had to take other kinds of work to support their families-they worked as butlers, laborers, and servants. In fact, one refugee served as a servant to the American governor of the Canal Zone, Once interned, most lost their jobs. Although well treated by the American military in the Canal Zone, the refugees eagerly sought to regain their

3 2 American Jewish Archives liberty. The wives of some of the internees tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Panamanian and American officials to release their hus- bands and other male relatives.13

Desperate to get their relatives released, several of the women contacted Rabbi Nathan Witkin, a representative of the Jewish Welfare Board and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, who lived in the Panamanian city of Balboa. Through the intervention of Witkin and the JDC, the Panamanian authorities agreed to release most of the Jewish refugees by the end of January 1942. However, a t least twenty- nine men remained in custody, and they continued to be held in the Balboa Internment Camp until April, when American military authorities shipped them, nineteen family members, and 560 non-Jews to New Orleans for transfer to internment camps in the United States.14

In the United States Upon their arrival a t New Orleans on April I 8,1942, the women and children were separated from the men and sent to the Seagoville De- tention Center, near Dallas, Texas. Two hundred and fifty women and children, including the nineteen Jews, were transported aboard a special train (under armed guard) to Seagoville. Because the State Depart- ment had no facilities of its own, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Army shared the responsibility for interning the "enemy aliens." The INS took over the Seagoville facility, a former federal prison for women, for use as a detention center. The Seagoville Deten- tion Center consisted of six dormitories, a hospital, a school, and an industrial center. Additional housing was constructed to prevent over- crowding. Compared to the camps where the males were sent, Seagoville was an attractive and pleasant place. The personnel proved more sympathetic to the situation of the Jewish internees than the personnel a t the male detention campsls

However, this did not lessen the pain of confinement. Both the separation and the continued internment surprised the Jewish women because they had believed that the American government would set them free upon arrival in the United States. Moreover, detention center officials would not or could not tell the women where their male relatives were interned. Consequently, it is not surprising that one of the women, Irene Wolff, wrote to the JDC that "we are the loneliest Jewish people who are in the USA."16

The males were split into two groups. Nineteen of them were sent to

Jewish Internees in the American South 3 3 Camp Blanding, Florida, and the other ten to Fort Ogelthorpe, Geor- gia. Both camps were run by the Army as internment camps for Axis POWS and Nazi sympathizers. At Camp Blanding and Fort Ogelthorpe, the Jews were housed with Axis sympathizers and "ex- posed to their outrages, shunned, and outlawed by them."" Appeals to camp officials for protection from the "petty persecution" by Axis POWS and Nazi sympathizers proved fruitless. Consequently, the Jews appealed to Rabbi Witkin and the Joint Distribution Committee to secure their release from detention or separation from the Axis POWS and Nazi sympathizers.

Efforts to Aid the Internees

Because the refugees were now in the United States, the Joint Distribu- tion Committee contacted the National Refugee Service to provide assistance to the internees. Joseph Chamberlain, the director of the NRS, pleaded with Attorney General Francis Biddle and Edward En- nis, the director of the Justice Department's Alien Enemy Control Unit, but neither had the authority to release the Jews. Chamberlain then met with Secretary of War Henry Stimson in June, but Stimson refused to make a decision. He turned the problem over to Colonel B. Bryan, chief of the Aliens Division of the Office of the Provost Mar- shal, but Colonel Bryan informed the NRS that only the Panamanian government had the authority to arrange the freedom of the Jewish internees. As an alternative, Bryan suggested contacting the com- manding officer of the Caribbean Defense Command. In other words, American government officials passed the buck and the Jews continued to be held in internment camps.

Meanwhile, the Jews at Camp Blanding were transferred to another POW facility at Camp Forrest, just outside Tullahoma, Tennessee. Camp Forrest was also used as an Army training facility. While Cham- berlain was meeting with government officials, Rabbi Gerstein met with the Jews interned at the camp and later drove down to Fort Ogelthorpe to hold religious services for the internees. "It was like Yom Kippur because of the tears and outcries," Rabbi Gerstein recalled, when the internees saw him for the first time.I9

Upon returning to Chattanooga, Rabbi Gerstein informed the Jew- ish community of the internees' plight, and the Refugee Committee in Chattanooga did what it could to assist the internees at Camp Forrest

34 American Jewish Archives and Fort Ogelthorpe. In addition, members of the Nashville Jewish community tried to help the refugees. Rabbi S. B. Yampol of Nashville went to Camp Forrest to hold religious services and "learned of their uprightness and worthiness, as well as of their plight and misery."20 Unfortunately, the rabbinical visits and the expressions of concern by the Chattanooga and Nashville Jewish communities did not lessen the deep despair felt by many of the internees by the middle of the summer of 1942. The refugees were tired and frustrated after eight months of confinement and five months of separation from their families.

Jewish "Spies " in British Honduras

While the Jewish internees at Camp Forrest and Fort Ogelthorpe sought to regain their freedom, another group of Jews from Central America lost theirs. They were rounded up on June 22,1942, as part of the well-publicized capture of a Nazi spy ring operating from Brit- ish Honduras and the Canal Zone. Headed by George Gough, a Brit- ish merchant and shipper known as the "king of Belize," the spy ring provided information and supplies to German submarines operating off the Central American coast. Nineteen people in British Honduras and one in the Canal Zone were apprehended. Four of the seven enemy aliens arrested were Jewish. What the press failed to report was that they had been included in the round-up by the British colonial governor, Sir John Adams Huntel; in an effort to purge the colony of its few remaining J e w ~ . ~ '

Originally, a Hungarian Jewish organization, the Kalman I . ~ e i s z group and the Refugee Economic Corporation of New York City had planned to settle eighty Jewish families from Hungary at El Cayo in British Honduras to establish an export-oriented handicrafts industry. The British government gave preliminary approval in August 1939, and the Jewish organizations purchased land in the Cayo district. Governor Hunter opposed the project and succeeded in persuading the government to reconsider. As a result, the British delayed permis- sion to settle in El Cayo until 1942 and then formally rejected the plan. A few Jews, helped by the Jewish Refugee Committee of London, had arrived in British Honduras, but Governor Hunter quickly "eased" them out of the colony. Hunter did not hide his "fierce anti- Semitism," and used the Nazi spy ring case as an opportunity to make the colony "J~denre in" .~~

Jewish Internees in the American South 35 After arresting the four Jewish men, the British colonial authorities

in Belize sent them and their families, a total of twelve people, to the Balboa Detention Center in the Canal Zone. Army intelligence questioned the men and held them in the Balboa Detention Center for five and a half weeks before shipping them to New Orleans. When the ship arrived, two of the men, Eric Joseph and Dr. Wilhelm Stein, were separated from the others and sent to Camp Forrest while the remainder of the group went to the Seagoville Civilian Detention Center, News of their confinement reached the National Refugee Service, and in the fall of 1942 Cecilia Razovsky, representing the NRS, went to Seagoville to meet with the Panamanian and British Honduran Jewish internees.13

In the Camps

Meanwhile, additional Jews from Panama and Central America arrived in the United States, and the refugees at Fort Ogelthorpe and Camp Forrest were transferred to other internment camps. By the middle of the summer of 1942, most of the internees at Camp Forrest and Fort Ogelthorpe, along with additional Jewish males, primarily those without families, were sent to the Stringtown Internment Camp at McAlester, Oklahoma. In September, the NRS arranged with government officials for the transfer of most of the married men to the Seagoville camp. Those that remained at Stringtown grew increasingly more depressed because they did not know what the NRS was doing for them, and they sought transfer to Camp Kenedy, Texas, another internment camp where Jewish internees from Latin America were confined.14

Some of the Jewish refugees ended up at the Kenedy Detention Cen- ter, a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp in southern Texas. Most of the detainees in the camp were German, Japanese, and Italian enemy aliens from Latin America. Internees were housed by nationali- ty, and there were frequent line-ups and bed checks to discourage escape attempts. Mounted guards and night guards patrolled the facility. Anyone who tried to get through the barbed-wire fence surround- ing the camp would set off an alarm. The INS ran the Kenedy Deten- tion Center, and both the INS and the Army were quite serious about not permitting any of the civilian detainees to e~cape.~'

While the single men at Camp Forrest, the Kenedy Detention Cen- ter, and the Stringtown Internment Camp had little to look forward to

36 American Jewish Archives in September 1942, most of the married men were reunited with their families at Seagoville in time for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year holiday. The Dallas Refugee Committee, representing the Dallas Jew- ish community, and the NRS provided services to the internees at Seagoville. However, the joy proved shortlived. The months of confinement dragged on. The refugees divided into three groups: Ger- man, Austrian, and British Honduran. Internal quarreling developed between the three groups because of the frustration of continued confinement. Eventually, the three factions established a committee to resolve disputes between the detainees. A rabbi from Dallas who served as a visiting chaplain to the detainees mediated any conflicts that the committee could not resolve.26

The Algiers Quarantine Station

Once again, however, the refugees were relocated. By the spring of 1943, all the Jewish detainees at Seagoville, except for the group from British Honduras, were sent to the INS Quarantine Station at Algiers, Louisiana. Because of the increasing number of pro-Nazi Germans kept a t the Kenedy Detention Center conditions . . . were rapidly getting worse and it would be dangerous to keep the Jewish detainees there."27 Therefore, the camp superintendent arranged the transfer of eleven of the thirteen Jews to Algiers. In addition, the remaining Jews at Stringtown and Camp Forrest were also sent to Louisiana.

The Quarantine Station at Algiers was located four miles south of the town on the west bank of the Mississippi River across from New Orleans. It consisted of ten large southern-style houses. Twenty to thirty people were assigned to each house, and there was separate housing for single men. Field reports by NRS representatives described the camp as well kept and with ample space for recreational activities. The refugees were free to roam around the camp grounds. The camp superintendent, Raymond Bunker, was "fair, sympathetic, and understanding," but he lacked the authority to release the internees.'Wnderstandably, although the Algiers Quarantine Station may have been a gilded cage, it remained a prison to its inmates, who had grown weary of their long confinement, especially since they had done nothing to warrant it.

The New Orleans Jewish community did what it could to lessen the burdens of confinement. Members of the New Orleans Council of

Jewish Internees in the American South 37 Jewish Women brought the refugees food and tried to assist them in other ways. They tried to make the refugees feel that they were not alone and that they were connected to Jews outside the camp. A local rabbi held services for the residents. Once a week, David Fichman, executive secretary of the New Orleans Committee for Refugee Serv- ice, visited the camp. A teacher went to the camp twice a week to teach the internees English. In addition, the New Orleans Council of Jewish Women provided the women with knitting supplies and the men with garden tools. These actions helped ease the refugees' feelings of isola- tion by demonstrating that someone cared about them.29

The Struggle to Get the Internees Released

Meanwhile, efforts by the NRS to obtain the release of the internees were complicated by the Justice Department's insistence on background checks in Panama for each of them and the State Department's dragging its feet on the refugee issue. A representative of the State Department visited the internees from British Honduras at Seagoville in early 1943, and he told them that the State Department had not interned them and therefore could not free them. According to the State Department's representative, the group from British Honduras "will not be released either now or after the war."30 The State Depart- ment argued that only the British government could release the refugees, since it was the British government that had interned them in the first place. Moreover, if the British government agreed to release them, they could not remain in the United States. This was very upsetting to the internees, because they feared that even if they regained their freedom they would be deported to Germany. Moreover, the State Depart- ments position contradicted what they had been told by British officials. According to Wilhelm Stein, one of the refugees, the British told them that they would remain interned for the duration of the war but would then be allowed to apply for American citi~enship.~'

Ironically, it was the desire of the British authorities to get rid of them that saved the Jews from continued internment. The British government agreed to change their status to internees-at-large as long as they remained in the United States. Over the opposition of the anti- Semites in the State Department, the NRS succeeded in persuading the Department of Justice to parole the refugees. After two investigations of their background and a hearing, the Justice Department released

38 American Jewish Archives twelve of the fourteen Jews confined at Seagoville in April 1943. How- ever, the internees from British Honduras had no legal status and could not apply for immigration to the United States. At the end of the war, they were told, the group from British Honduras would be required to leave the United States. The National Refugee Service accepted responsibility for the refugees, and with the help of the Dallas Emigre Service Committee and the Jewish Welfare Federation the refugees were resettled in Dallas and Houston, Texas. Initially, they were placed in private homes and hotels in Dallas, and the Jewish Welfare Federation advanced funds to the refugees to pay for living expenses. In Dallas, and later in New Orleans, the local Jewish communities assisted paroled refugees and helped them integrate into American

Internees on Parole

The release of the British Honduran group acted as a catalyst to move the United States government to free most of the Panamanian Jews. First, however, they had to overcome the obstacles created by the State and Justice departments. Attorney General Francis Biddle met with Breckinridge Long in early 1943 to discuss the internee issue. Long had played an instrumental role in establishing the internee program "to rid Latin America of thousands of unfriendly aliens by interning them in the United state^."^^ Also, he was a known anti-Semite who had used his authority to reduce severely the number of Jewish refugees allowed to enter the United States before and during World War 11. As expected, Long strenuously objected to Biddle's proposal to parole the interned Jews, but he finally agreed to it because they would have to leave the United States after the war.35

Because of Justice Department procedures it was months before the Jews from Panama left Algiers. Representatives from the Justice De- partment went to Panama to investigate the detainees. In addition, the refugees needed to provide evidence of affiliation with Jewish organizations in Latin America or Europe. Ideally, the Justice Department wanted evidence from relatives in the United States that would prove that the detainees were Jews. Each refugee had to sign an affidavit of loyalty stating that he was ( I ) Jewish (by religion or "race"), (2) loyal to the democratic cause, (3) opposed to National Socialism, and (4)

Jewish Internees in the American South 39 had commmitted no crimes. In mid-February, the Justice Department held hearings in New Orleans, and the report to Biddle recommended the release of most of the detainees. Fifty-four of the detainees held a t Algiers were paroled iin August 1943, but six remained interned for the duration of the war.36

Jewish organizations played an important role in the resettling of the refugees. The Justice Department required the NRS to find sponsors for the parolees to assure their good behavior. Where possible the NRS found sponsors in cities close to relatives of the refugees. With the help of local Jewish communities, the former detainees were resettled in Denver, Chicago, Detroit, St. PaulIMinneapolis, Memphis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Youngstown. In St. Louis, for example, Self-Aid St. Louis assisted in the resettling of the Jews and members of the local Jewish community volunteered as sponsors. Three of the nine refugees sent to St. Louis were soon drafted into the armed forces of the United state^.^'

As parolees the refugees enjoyed an ambiguous status. They could live outside internment camps and were free to resettle wherever they could find sponsors. The internees could find jobs or obtain schooling and were subject to the draft. Those who served in the armed forces could get their status changed, but those who did not serve were liable to be deported a t the end of the war. The INS kept tabs on them through the Parole Unit, because all the refugees had to register with the Alien Registration Division of the Justice Department upon their release from detention. The Jews interned at large were part of a larger group of Latin American detainees who were released between 1943 and 1945. In addition to the Jews, thirty-two Italians and 243 Ger- mans were given the status of internees-at-large.38

Efforts by the NRS between 1943 and 1945 to change the status of the refugees failed, primarily because of the opposition of the State Department. Even the establishment of the War Refugee Board in Jan- uary 1944 did not help. The arrival of 982 refugees at Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York, in August 1944 detracted attention from the plight of the far smaller group of from Latin America. The Roosevelt administration did not want to alter the status of the Latin American Jews because it feared setting a precedent that would apply to the Fort Ontario detainees.39

For the few Jews who remained interned at Algiers, Seagoville, Ellis

40 American Jewish Archives Island, and elsewhere, some of the old problems reappeared. In the middle of 1944 a group of pro-Nazi German aliens who had been transferred to Algiers elected a pro-Nazi to head the committee of internees. The man, Kurt Ludecke, was the author of I Knew Hitler and had advised Hitler in the 1920s. Although he had broken with Hitler in 1933, Ludecke retained his loyalty to National Socialism. After World War 11, Ludecke was tried as a Nazi collaborator, and he was deported from United States in 1948. Under his leadership, the pro-Nazi elements at Algiers persecuted the few remaining Jews and non-Jewish anti-Nazis. Once again, Jews who had entered the United States as enemy aliens were subjected to "petty" discrimination by pro-Nazis in American internment camps.40

The Threat of Deportation

As soon as the war in Europe ended, the State Department advocated the deportation of the enemy aliens brought from Latin America. Of- ficials in the State Department argued that the resolutions adopted at the FebruaryJMarch 1945 Inter-American Conference on the Prob- lems of War and Peace held in Mexico City required the United States to protect the security of the Western Hemisphere and deport the enemy aliens to Germany, Italy, and Japan. Because of unsettled conditions in Germany, the War Department objected to this proposal. The Justice Department also opposed the deportation, because it lacked the authority to force the aliens to leave the United States. In response to these objections, the State Department drafted an executive order, issued by President Harry Truman on September 8, 1945 (Proclama- tion 2662), permitting the repatriation of the Latin American inter- n e e ~ . ~ ~

The National Refugee Service sought to prevent the deportation of the Jewish refugees. Because of the peculiar status of the twelve from British Honduras, the State Department exempted them from immediate repatriation. However, the NRS remained concerned about the refugees from Panama and other Latin American countries. Joining with the American Christian Committee for Refugees and the Catho- lic Welfare Conference, the NRS sent representatives to meet with Albert Clattenburg, Jr., assistant chief, Special War Problems Division of the State Department, on September 20, 1945, to discuss the Latin

Jewish Internees in the American South 41 American internees. At the meeting, Clattenburg informed the representatives of the social service agencies that the internees would have to leave the United States within the next six months. Moreover, Clat- tenburg argued that the Justice Department had failed to sufficiently investigate the internees and none of them should have been released from the internment camps.42

The meeting grew bitter as the agency representatives defended the rights of the internees and Clattenburg defended the State Depart- ment's right to deport all the internees to Germany, Italy, and Japan. When Chamberlain pointed out that Jews could not be described as pro-Nazi, Clattenburg "became quite excited and he said that in the Panamanian group everyone of them had pro-Nazi feelings."43 He went on to add that German Jews wanted to return to Germany because no anti-Semitism existed in that country. Although Clatten- burg's observations were utter nonsense, they reflected the views of many State Department officials who shared the prejudices of Breck- inridge Long and who had worked for years not to aid refugees but to protect the United States from them. While the meeting provided an opportunity for representatives of the social service agencies to ex- press their concerns about the future of the Latin American internees, they could not budge Clattenburg, who remained adamant that the internees (Jewish, Catholic, or whatever) must leave the United States. Because of the unsatisfactory outcome of the meeting with Clatten- berg, the NRS decided to go around him. On October 24, 1945, the Alien Enemy Control Section (AECS) of the State Department was established to deal with the Latin American internees. Immediately, the NRS contacted the AECS to persuade them that the Jews should not be deported to Germany. In addition, two members of a Detroit affiliate of the NRS, Ted Benuitt and Fred Butzel, contacted Senator Homer Ferguson, a refugee advocate. The senator, a Republican from Michigan, met with Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson to lobby for the refugees and to persuade the department to grant the internees hearing^.^^

A combination of outside pressure from the NRS, Catholic groups, and the American Civil Liberties Union and divisions within the State Department on the internee issue led to a partial victory for the refugee advocates. Detainees would get hearings, and those not considered a threat to the security of the Western Hemisphere would be assisted in

42 American Jewish Archives returning to Latin America or settling in the United States as immigrants. A new problem soon emerged, because several of the Latin American nations did not want any of the enemy aliens back or did not want those of Japanese ancestry. Added to the muddle was the question of what to do with the Jews.46

Meanwhile, the threat of deportation had a severe psychological impact upon the refugees, and the uncertainty made it impossible for them to plan for the future. As Fred Kappel told the NRS, "the nervous strain, imposed upon us is greater than we are able to end~re."~'None of the refugees wanted to return to Europe, and only a few wished to go back to Latin America, because the Latin American countries, especially Panama, had rounded them up and expelled them. The only real option that the internees desired was to become Americans. The problem was to convince the American government that they should be allowed to remain.

The Final Resolution

Unlike the refugees interned at Oswego, no single government action determined their fate. On December 20, 1945, President Truman informed the NRS that the Oswego internees could remain in the United States as immigrants, and two days later he issued a directive to the secretary of state and the attorney general to admit the Fort Ontario refugees as immigrants under existing quotas. The Truman directive allowed refugees and displaced persons to file for immigrant visas under existing immigration quotas. Only two groups, the internees at Fort Ontario and a small group of Polish orphans in Mexico, were able to expedite their entrance into the United States as immigrants. The from Latin America were able to use the Truman Directive to change their status and remain in the United States, but only on an individual basis.48

It took two more years for the cases of most of the Latin American Jews to be resolved. On November 29,1945, the Justice Department lifted the parole supervision over the refugees, and between January and March 1946 they were released from the status of internees-at- large. Then, in early 1946, the last of the Jewish refugees still in internment were set free. Of the eighty-one Jews interned from Latin Ameri- ca, two voluntarily returned to Latin America, four died (one in in-

Jewish Internees in the American South 4 3 ternment and three as internees-at-large), and seventy-five sought to remain in the United States. By the end of 1947, the NRS (it became the United Service for New Americans after merging with a section of the National Council of Jewish Women in 1946) had succeeded in changing the status of all but ten of the refugees. As of 195 I, all but three of the cases were resolved. Finally, the Refugee Relief Act of 19 j3 permitted any alien brought to the United States from Latin America before July I, 19 5 3, to request a change of status to immigrant. This settled the few remaining cases involving Jews and allowed the several hundred Peruvian Japanese who had been interned to stay here and become American citizens.49

Summary

The confinement of the Jewish refugees was a story that never should have happened. Anti-Semitism in Panama and British Honduras, as well as bureaucratic incompetence in several Latin American nations, led to the arrest and internment of the Jews. Only Franz Kafka could have created a tale of German Jews being arrested as pro-Nazi enemy aliens and then being sent to the United States for internment with real Nazi sympathizers. Once caught in the bureau-cratic web, the Jews found it difficult to escape the absurdity of their situation. Most of the refugees were interned from December 1941 until August 1943 in the Canal Zone and, after being sent to the United States, in camps in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, or Louisiana before their release to the status of internees at-large.

Jewish organizations and local Jewish communities played a significant role in helping the refugees. The American Jewish Joint Distribu- tion Committee helped bring their plight to the attention of the Na- tional Refugee Service. The NRS constantly lobbied for the internees and succeeded in convincing the Justice Department and the hostile State Department to release most of them from the internment camps. Eventually, it succeeded in getting their status changed to immigrants. Local Jewish communities in Dallas, New Orleans, Chattanooga, and Nashville played an important role in boosting the morale of the internees and demonstrating that someone cared about them. Other Jewish communities helped by providing sponsors and by joining in the postwar effort to get them classified as immigrants.

44 American Jewish Archives Refugee advocates and Jewish organizations faced a major problem

in pleading the case of the Jewish refugees-widespread anti-Semitism in the United States. Between 1920 and 1950 the American public remained hostile to immigrants and refugees, especially those who were Jews. Polls taken during the war indicated widespread anti- Semitism, and even the full knowledge of the Holocaust did not eliminate anti-Semitism immediately. "As late as 1945 and 1946," sociologist Charles Stember noted, "well over half of the population said they would not be influenced against a Congressional candidate by his being anti-semi ti^."^^ According to Leonard Dinnerstein, an expert on postwar refugee policy, anti-Semitism in the United States made Con- gress reluctant to accept the survivors of the Holocaust. Immigration restrictionists wrote the provisions of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act that prevented the immigration of significant numbers of Jews.S1

In fact, during the war, the NRS and other refugee advocates used the example of the Latin American internees and the Fort Ontario internees to prod the State Department and President Roosevelt into taking more decisive action on the refugee issue, but they failed. The presence of ever 4,000 enemy aliens in the United States outside of existing immigration laws appeared a perfect example for the establishment of temporary havens for refugees, but the Roosevelt administration refused to go beyond Fort Ontario lest it antagonize congressional immigration restrictionists. After the Jews from Latin America were paroled, the NRS attempted to use this success as a precedent for the release of the Fort Ontario internees, but President Roosevelt refused to take the political risk it would have entailed. Because the Jews interned in the South only numbered eighty-one and there was no publicity when they were released, the Roosevelt administration could afford to grant them internment at large. The well-publicized case of the Fort Ontario refugees prevented their release because the antiim- migrant bloc in Congress would have attacked President Roosevelt.

Once President Truman took the political risk and liberated the Fort Ontario refugees by issuing the Truman Directive, he provided a loop- hole for the Jews from Latin America to use if they could get released from the status of internees-at-large. The Jews from Latin America were not admitted in a group, like the Fort Ontario refugees or the Polish orphans from Mexico, because they had been brought to the United States as enemy aliens and because President Truman had al-

Jewish Internees in the American South 45 ready taken a political risk. Officials in the Truman administration probably did not want the Truman Directive and his cautious program to admit refugees and displaced persons within existing immigration quotas to be identified in the public mind as a Jewish program. In- stead, the admission of the Latin American Jews on a case-by-case basis generated no publicity and no negative reaction from Congress.

Are there any villains or heroes in this story? The heroes are clear- the Jews interned as enemy aliens or Nazi saboteurs (the British Hon- duras group). They endured what they should never have had to en- dure. The NRS, especially Joseph Chamberlain, Cecilia Razovsky, and Ann Petluck, deserve credit for the determination they demonstrated in pushing the cause of the internees through the bureaucratic web of the Army, State, and Justice departments. Long and Clattenburg deserve condemnation for using American refugee policy to prevent the admission of refugees and for attempting to prevent the liberation of the Jewish internees. Fortunately, common sense finally prevailed- most of the Jews were separated from pro-Nazis, sent to Seagoville and Algiers, released as internees-at-large, and finally admitted as im- m i g r a n t ~ . ~ ~

Notes

I . Israel Gerstein to author, August 18, 1985 2. Ann Petluck to Joseph Chamberlain, October 15,1945, file 51, Joseph Chamberlain Papers,

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO). 3. John Christgau, "Enemies": World War I1 Alien Internment (Ames, Iowa: 1985), pp.

5 1-85. His book deals with internees at the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp in Bismarck, North Dakota.

4. Sharon Lowenstein, "A New Deal for Refugees: The Promise and Reality of Oswego," American Jewish History 71 (March 1982): 325-341; Ruth Gruber, Haven (New York, 1983); Lawrence Baron, "Haven from the Holocaust," New York History 44, no. I (January 1983): 4-34; Harvey Strum, "Fort Ontario Refugee Shelter, 1944-1946," American Jewish History 73 Uune 1984): 398-421.

5. Charles Stember et al., Jews in the Mind of America (New York, 1966), pp. 31-155. 6. David Wyman, Paper Walls (Amherst, N.H., 1968); idem, The Abandonment of the Jews:

America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (New York, 1984). Other accounts are: Arthur Morse, While Six Million Died (New York, 1968); Henry Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970); Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Supression of the Truth About Hitler's "Final Solution" (Boston, 1981); Saul Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed (Detroit, 1973); Sarah Feck,"The Cam- paign for an American Response to the Nazi Holocaust, 1943-1945,'' Journal of Contemporary History 15 (1980): 367-400.

7. Harold Troper and Irving Arbella, None Is Too Many (New York, 1983), expose the reasons

46 American Jewish Archives for Canada's reluctance to admit Jewish refugees. For details of the British position, see Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Oxford, 1979).

8. Paula Draper, "Politics of Refugee Immigration: The Pro-Refugee Lobby and the Interned Refugees, 1940-1944,"Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal 7 (Fall 1983): 78. Her article was based on her "The Accidental Immigrants: Canada and the Interned Refugees" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1983).

9. Harvey Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle ofHate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States (Seattle, 1981), p. 12.

10. Graham Stuart, "Special War Problems Division," Department of State Bulletin 11 (Au- gust 6, 1944): 146-147.

11. Richard Behrendt to Dr. Ernest Fraenkel, November 23,1942, Cecilia Razovsky Papers, American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS). For the internment of non-Japanese Americans, see Paul Spickard, "InJustice Compounded: Ameriasians and Non-Japanese Americans in World War I1 Concentration Camps," Journal ofAmerican Ethnic History 5 (Spring 1986): 5-22. Anti- Semitism continues to exist in Panama, Albany Jewish World, August 13, 1987.

12. Statement of Gerhard and Charlotte Schlesinger, November 30, 1942, Statement of Fred Kappel, December 12, 1942, Cecilia Razovsky Papers, AJHS.

13. Fred Kappel to the Joint Distribution Committee UDC), April I 2, 1942, file 41 I ; Olga Kohlman to Agro-Joint, December 29, 1941, file 783; Leo Fuchs et al. to JDC, December 20, 1941, file 783, Panama, JDC Archives.

14. Fred Kappel to JDC, April 28,1942, file 41 I, Nathan Witkin to Robert Pilpel, January 39, 1942, file 983, Robert Pilpel to Nathan Witkin, February 2, 1942, file 983, Moses Leavitt and Mrs. Samuel Friedman to Nathan Witkin, January IS , 1942, file 783, Panama, JDC Archives; Joseph Chamberlain to Francis Biddle, June I, 1942, file 49, Joseph Chamberlain Papers, YIVO.

IS. New York Times, April 7,9, 1942; Dallas Morning News, April 11, 1942, June 25, June 27,1942, Mrs. Lucile Boykin, Local History Specialist at the Dallas Public Library, provided me with the Dallas newspaper clippings. For a description of the Seagoville Civilian Detention Center, see Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate, p. 36. "By May, the camp held 319 enemy aliens." Most were the Latin American internees, and about a third were Japanese-Peruvians.

16. Irene Wolff to Cecilia Razovsky, June 5, 1942, file 49, Joseph Chamberblain, YIVO. See also Irene Wolff to Robert Pilpel, April 27, 1942, file 411, JDC Archives.

17. Fred Kappel to JDC, April I 2,1942, file 41 I, JDC Archives. Also, see Joseph Chamberlain to Francis Biddle, June I, 1942, file 49, Walter Wolff to Nathan Witkin, June 18, 1942, file 49, Joseph Chamberlain Papers, YIVO.

18. Joseph Chamberlain to Francis Biddle, June I, 1942, Joseph Chamberlain to Edward Ennis, June 12, 1942, Joseph Chamberlain to Colonel Bryan, June 18, 1942, Colonel Bryan to Joseph Chamberlain, June 9,1942, file 49, Joseph Chamberlain Papers, YIVO; Edward Ennis to Joseph Chamberlain, June IS, 1942, file 411, JDC Archives.

19. Israel Gerstein to author, August 18, 1985. 20. S. B. Yampol to Cecilia Razovsky, April 5,1943, file 537, Internees from Latin America,

National Refugee Service, YIVO; Otto Mannheimer for the Jewish Internees at Camp Forrest to George Berke, Cecilia Razovsky Papers, AJHS.

21. New York Times, June 26, July 3,4,12,1942; JoanVan Mattsahn to Ben Whitman, July 5, 1942, file 4 ~ 1 b , British Honduras, JDC Archives.

22. Wilhelm Stein and Kelman Lowenthal to W. M. Citron (editor of Aufbau, a German- Jewish newspaper published in New York City), September 9,1940; Cecilia Razovsky to Walter Weiss, July 5, 1942, Memorandum on Refugees, Refugee Economic Corporation, 1944, file 45 ~ b , British Honduras, JDC Archives.

Jewish Internees in the American South 47 23. Eric Joseph to Walter Weiss, August 25,1942, Walter Weiss to Eric Joseph, September 22,

1942, Eric Joseph to Walter Weiss, October 17, 1942, file 4 5 ~ b , British Honduras, JDC Ar- chives; Jack Gershentson t o Cecilia Razovsky, February 2, 4, 1943, file 538, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

24. Cecilia Razovsky t o Joseph Chamberlain, June 12, 1942, file 49 ,Joseph Chamberlain Papers, Wilhelm Reichman to Cecilia Razovsky,December 23,1942, file 541, National Refugee Service, YIVO; Cecilia Razovsky to Robert Pilpel, October 9, 1942, Robert Pilpel to Cecilia Razov~ky, October 7, 1942, file 411, JDC Archives.

25, Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate, p. 31. 26. National Refugee Service News, September 4, 1942, file 411, JDC Archives; Cecilia Ra-

zovsky to Reuben Resnick, January 21, 1943, Jack Gershtenson to Cecilia Razovsky, January 19, February I, 2, 1943, file 538, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

27. Cecilia Razovsky to A. Abrahamson, February 8, 1943, file 541, National Refugee Serv- ice, YIVO.

28. Field Report of David Fichman, February 19-23, 1943, file 1130, Field Report of Jules Seits, February 23, 1943, file 1130, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

29. Cecilia Razovsky to S. B. Yampol, April 12, 1943, file 537, David Fichman t o Cecilia Razovsky, March 25, 1943, file 537, National Refugee Service, YIVO. Fichman increased his visits t o three times a week, and a second representative from the New Orleans Committee for Refugee Service went out once a week. Unfortunately, the refugee files of Judith Hyman Douglas a t Louisiana State University cover the period of March-June 1936.

30. Jack Gershtenson t o Cecilia Razovsky, February 4, 1943, file 538, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

3 I. Wilhelm Stein to Cecilia Razovsky, January 6,1943, Margaret Keiles to Cecilia Razovsky, January 30, 1943, file 538, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

32. Cecilia Razovsky to Emery Komtos, April 2, 1943, file 451b, British Honduras, JDC Archives; Memorandum, Central and South American Internees, n.d., Other Refugees file, Box I, Fort Ontario Refugee Shelter, Columbia University Library.

33. Jack Gershtenson to Cecilia Razovsky, April 2,1943, D. Spielberg (Resettlement Consult- ant) to Cecilia Rasovsky, April 9, 1943, file 537, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

34. Feingold, Politics of Rescue, p. 261. 35. Summary of Meeting between NRS representative and Special War Problems Division,

September 20, 1945, file 542, National Refugee Service, YIVO. 36. J. W. Russell to Cecilia Razovsky, February 5,1943, Joseph Beck to Cecilia Rasovsky, May

6, June 17,1943, file 537,Ann Petluck toMigrationStaff, September 5,1945, file 552, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

37. Bernard Dubin to Joseph Chamberlain, January 26, 1945, Ernst Mansbarcher to Charles Riegelnan, March 14, 1945, file 542, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

38. Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle ofHate, p. 116: Ann Petluck t o Ernst Mansbarcher, March 28, 1945, file 542, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

39. Ann Petluck to Migration Staff, August 15, 1944, file 587, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

40. David Fichman to Gisela Sheven, July 20,1944, Ann Peduck t o Migration Staff, August 15, 1944, file 587, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

41. Joseph Drew to Henry Stimson, May 8, 1945, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Rela- tions o f the United States (FRUS), Diplomatic Papers, 1945, vol. 4, pp. 266-268; Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate, p. 115; J. Holbrook Chapman to Ann Petluck, October 3 I, 1945, file 542, National Refugee Service, YIVO.

48 American Jewish Archives 42. Summary of Ann Petluck, September 20, 1945, file 542, Memo on Latin American Inter-

nees, September I I, 1945, file 545, National Refugee Service, YIVO. 43. Summary of Meeting, September 20, 1945, file 542, National Refugee Service, YIVO. 44. Sharon Lowenstein, Token Refuge: The Story o f the Jewish Refugee Shelter at Oswego,

1944-1946 (Bloomington, Indiana: 1986), p. I I. 45. Memorandum, Latin American Internees, October 8,1945, file 544 Ann Petluck to Joseph

Chamberlain, October IS, 1945, file 542, Ann Petluck to Jonathan Bingham, November 9, 1945, Dean Acheson to Homer Ferguson, October 10, 19, 1945, file 544, National Refugee Service, YIVO. The NRS contacted Jonathan Bingham, chief of the Alien Enemy Control Section of the State Department, but neither he nor his deputy Louis Henkin remembered the Jewish refugees. Jonathan Bingham to author, August 4,1985; Louis Henkin to author, September 11, 1985. The NRS lobbied the AECS, the Special War Problems Division, and the Justice Depart- ment. The Justice Department and the Special War Problems Division handled the cases of the Jewish internees. According to Bingham and Henkin, the AECS was primarily concerned with returning non-Jewish internees to Latin America or their countries of origin. Unfortunately, Edward Ennis, director of the Alien Control Unit of the Justice Department, did not recall the Jewish internees, Ennis to author, July 15, 1985. 46. Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle o f Hate, p. I 16, James Doyle, who served as an assistant to

State Department Counselor Ben V. Cohan, was one of the people in the State Department who objected to Clattenburg's proposals to deport the Jews and other enemy aliens without hearings. James Doyle to author, September 10, 1985. 47. Fred Kappel to the National Refugee Service, October 4,1945, file 542, National Refugee

Service, YIVO. 48. Amy Gottlieb, "Refugee Immigration: The Truman Directive," Prologue I 3, no. I (Spring

1981): 5, 7. 49. Statistical Census of Latin American Internees, April 17,1946, Summary of Latin Ameri-

can Internee Cases, November 14,1947, file 542, Ann Petluck to Joseph Beck, January I 3,1947, file 543, Lillian Cohen to Ann Rabinowitz, April 5, 1951, file 542, National Refugee Service, YIVO; Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle o f Hate, p. 171. 50. Stember, Jews in the Mind o f America, p. 133. 5 I. Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors o f the Holocaust (New York, 1982), p. 5.

Also, Gil Loescher and John Scanlan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America's Half Open- Door, 1945 to the Present (New York, 1986), p. 9. Also, the Canadian government did not welcome the survivors of the Holocaust, Arbella and Troper, None 1s Too Many, p. 285. 52. An example of NRS efforts to use the cases of the Latin American internees to prod the

Roosevelt administration to establish temporary havens can be found in Joseph Beck to John Pehle, March 14, 1944. Notes on meeting with John Pehle, National Refugee Service, February 24,1944, Box 17, War Refugee Board, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Sharon Lowenstein makes the same point in a brief mention of the Latin American internees, Token Refuge, p. 115.

Harvey Strum teaches in the division of Social Science at Russel Sage College, Albany, New York. He last appeared in American Jewish Archives in the April 1983 issue with his article on "Louis Marshall and Anti-Semitism at Syracuse University."

American Jewish Personalities

Dr. Samuel James Meltzer: Physiologist of the Rockefeller Institute

Adolph Meltzer

The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul. No one ever had a more inspiring life than Dr. Meltzer so far as life was concerned in scientific endeavor and efforts on behalf of other investigators. For this poor Russian emigrant accomplished the impossible. -Leonard R. Rowntree'

Samuel James Meltzer was a mature man of thirty-three when he came to this country as a friendless and virtually penniless physician. While engaged in general practice, burdened with the handicap of learning a new language, he chose to pay for the privilege of using laboratory space and to engage in research. These difficulties notwithstanding, and in spite of the fact that he had no academic affiliation, he rose rapidly to a position of such eminence as a physiologist that the dis- criminating Simon Flexner chose him to head the Physiology Depart- ment of the new Rockefeller Institute, which he was organizing as a rival to the renowned Pasteur Institute and Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Europe. Indeed, Meltzer accomplished the impossible.

He was born on March 22,185 I, in a small Jewish settlement near Panevezys, which is near Kovno in Russian Courland (now Lithua- nia). His father, a melamed, served as the community rabbi. As a boy Meltzer early showed an unusual talent for learning. He memorized long passages from the Talmud and demonstrated a precocious skill in p i l p ~ l . ~ Simon, his father, glowed with pride as learned men sought his elder son's help in the interpretation of difficult passages. Surely, he felt, the youngster was destined to be a sage in Israel. However, while still a youth, the boy was introduced to other literature which stirred his imagination. He began to demonstrate an eager desire for learning of all kinds. He read avidly and in secret-against his father's com- mands and despite vigorous disciplinary measures.

Samuel James Meltzer ( I 851-1920)

American Jewish Personalities 5 I

These bitter assertions of parental authority led to constant friction, and the boy began to hate his father. At nineteen, when he was married to Olga Leavitt, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do merchant, he used the customary dowry money to leave his home and its intellectually oppressive environment. Intrigued by his readings in philosophical literature, he traveled with his young bride to Konigs- berg, the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. Here he entered a Gymnasium to begin his formal education and to learn the German l ang~age .~

Six years later, before proceeding to the University of Berlin, Melt- zer sent his young wife and their two children home to her parent^.^ It was I 876 when he entered that prestigious institution, intent on making the study of philosophy his life's work. As a student he attracted the attention of the Jewish philosopher Herman Steinthal, an erudite scholar and a brilliant lecturer, active in social reform. Befriending the young student, the teacher took a fatherly interest in him, inviting him to his home and generally guiding his footsteps. He urged Meltzer to abandon the study of philosophy and undertake the study of medicine so as to be more certain of an acceptable material existence. Meltzer, who was in severe financial straits, was quick to follow this sage advice.

The medical faculty at Berlin, during the years that Meltzer attended the university, was perhaps the best in the world. Here our student came to the attention of Hugo Kronecker,' who had been a pupil of the great pioneer and master teacher of physiology, Karl Ludwig of Leip- zig6 Like Steinthal, Kronecker was impressed by the sincerity and ability of this impoverished young man and became his dear friend, inviting him to his home and acting as his counsellor and guide.

The nineteenth century was a fruitful period for research and new discoveries, and as a result, especially as the century drew to a close, the world saw great changes in many areas of human endeavor. Some of these, naturally, pertained to health and medicine, and in conse- quence laboratory training in science and research techniques became an essential part of medical education.' A veritable scientific revolution was taking place, especially in Germany and France, attracting ambitious foreign students. The mastermind of the laboratory became the most revered of doctors.

It was natural that phySiology, the study of normal function-how the various parts of the body work-should have first call on the

52 American Jewish Archives output of the laboratory. Physicians had to know the "normal'' to better understand the aberrations induced by disease in order to treat these changes and, especially, to prevent them. Meltzer; then, had su- perb training in physiology, and in laboratory methods and procedure, but above all, he experienced the sympathetic guidance of an exceptional teacher who instilled in him a love for research-the road to new discovery and its potential for aid to mankind.

Meltzer conducted his first research as a student, and it was to Kronecker that he dedicated his dissertation for the Doctor of Medi- cine degree.8

In I 8 82, when he graduated from medical school, Meltzer was thirty-one years of age. He was offered several positions on the condition that he be baptized into the Christian faith, but he r e f ~ s e d . ~ Instead, he undertook several voyages as a ship's doctor in order to accumulate funds before emigrating to the "Golden Land."

On July I, I 883, Meltzer began practicing medicine in Harlem, then an affluent residential neighborhood of New York City.lo He was to reside in this area for the remainder of his life. Meltzer's medical practice was very lucrative. Within two years he was able to send for his wife and his two children after ten years of separation."

During this period of his life, despite the demands of his practice, and some twenty years before he was asked to join the faculty of the new Rockefeller Institute in 1902, Meltzer was drawn to the laboratory by his intense drive to engage in research. He paid for the privilege of using facilities at several places, including Columbia Medical School, Bellevue Hospital, and Harlem Hospital, as he carried out his ideas, usually a t the expense of his sleep and his personal life. Recog- nizing and openly deloring the stagnant state of medical science in New York, he made urgent pleas for the formation of societies for the exchange of ideas and the promotion of knowledge.12

Meltzer's training, knowledge, and phenomenal memory, as well as his charm and compassionate character, were driven by a boundless energy. As his facility with English grew,13 he made himself heard and admired as he got around to numerous societies. His mind was quick to grasp the essentials of a paper, and his retentive memory was sure to bring a broad knowledge into any medical or scientific discussion. He became well known to the medical profession as the bridge between the laboratory and applied medicine, the man who could explain what

American Jewish Personalities 5 3

was of practical value in new laboratory discoveries. Meltzer entered practice in 1883 and joined the Rockefeller Insti-

tute in 1903. In those two decades he published some eighty scientific papers. 'The subjects he treated were about equally distributed between the clinical and the experimental. He was fifty-three years old when he was invited to join the new Rockefeller Institute.14 In the latter half of his scientific life, the years of his association with the Institute, which continued until his death seventeen years later (1920). Meltzer published over three hundred papers. Moreover, he was remarkably fair, indeed generous, as a "chief"; many publications came out of his laboratory without his name.15

Although he was a most productive scientist, it was in the field of public relations that he excelled and where his influence was most strongly felt. He was an able "ambassador" for the Institute to medical greats at home and abroad, as well as to the practitioners of medicine in the numerous societies to which he belonged. He was especially popular with the younger men because of his progressive views and his helpfulness in directing their efforts. His theme was constant: "Under- stand the fundamental to develop the practical."

Because of his extensive travels and broad circle of acquaintances, his advice was often sought for faculty considerations. His correspondence was voluminous. He counted as his close friends eminent professors at such institutions as Johns Hopkins and Harvard, as well as many abroad. His friendship with Kronecker endured until his old teacher died.

Besides his important inspirational role in education, his contributions to clinical and to laboratory medicine were legion. Kronecker's influence directed Meltzer's lifelong interest in the function of the heart and lungs. He strove to educate the profession in the role of the involuntary (autonomic) nervous system, discussing such phenomena as cardiac standstill, arrhythmia, and shock. He was sought as an authority on problems related to resuscitation from toxins, asphyxia, and electric shock and served on three national committees devoted to these problems. His interest in toxicology led him to investigate the causes and control of convulsions. He found a magic in the ability of magnesium sulphate (epsom salts) to control such seizures."

In 1908 Meltzer devised a simple method of intratracheal insufflation, developed primarily to keep his experimental animals alive while

54 American Jewish Archives their respiratory movements were temporarily paralyzed by magnesium sulphate. This simple procedure was soon adapted as a means of giving anesthesia.Is "Meltzer's method of intratracheal insufflation anesthesia" left the laboratory to aid humanity after nearly ten years of lively debate and spread rapidly across the world. It allowed the chest to be opened safely and made thoracic surgery possible. When the American Association for Thoracic Surgery was formed in 1918, Meltzer, "the renowned physiologist from the Rockefeller Institute," was elected its first president.

Meltzer was the first to recognize that asthma was an allergic disease. He suggested the use of oxygen in heart disease and advocated the wearing of face masks around patients with transmissable dis- eases. He instituted prolonged gastric feeding via nasal tube. He was the first to demonstrate the difference in the rate that substances are absorbed after injection under the skin, into the muscles, and into a vein. He demonstrated the avidity of fluid absorption from the perito- neal cavity in animals deprived of their kidneys, suggesting to the future that the peritoneum might be used for dialysis. These and other considerations demonstrate his boldness in adapting laboratory findings to the practice of medicine.

When endocrinology began to emerge as a new ~cience,'~ Meltzer was soon recognized as an authority and made several basic discoveries in this field. He developed a sensitive biologic test for adrenalin, which contributed much to understanding the function of the pupil of the eye. As early as March 19,191 5 , I. S. Kleiner and S. J. Meltzer read a very important paper before the National Academy of Science, demonstrating that after the injection of a surplus of sugar (glucose), the intravenous infusion of a strained emulsion of pancreas restored the blood glucose to normal.20 (Insulin was not isolated until July 1921, over six years later.)

Meltzer retired from the headship of the department on June 30, 19 19. He died on November 7,1920. Funeral services were conducted in the auditorium of the Ethical Culture Society. His body was crema- ted.21

In its obituary, the New York Times said: "He possessed an idealism peculiarly fitting him for intensive laboratory studies, though perhaps not easily coinciding with the practical side of life." This sentence hinted at his attempt to organize an International Brotherhood of Phy-

American Jewish Personalities 5 5 sicians to help prevent the horrible slaughter and devastation called war. His heroic efforts toward that quixotic dream proved time-con- suming, debilitating, unpopular, and futile.12

Notes

I. Leonard R. Rowntree, "Dr. Samuel James Meltzer: The Man Who Made Medical Meetings Interesting," in Amid Masters of Twentieth Century Medicine (Springfield, 111.: Charles C. Tho- mas, 1938), chap. 20, pp. 355-381.

2. The technique of pilpul, used in the interpretation of the Talmud, involves certain rules of argumentation, supported by authoritative commentaries, that helped the young scholar develop a discipline that was to exert considerable influence on his research, his discussion, and his writing.

3. The usual age for entering the Gymnasium was eight or ten. He was a foreigner of nineteen and married!

4. Olga and the two children, a girl and a boy, joined him in America ten years later. 5. lsaac Asimov, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982), lists Leopold Kronecker, Hugo's brother and a famous mathematician, as a Jew who converted to Protestant Christianity in the last years of his life. We must conclude that Hugo Kronecker was born a Jew.

6. Karl Ludwig (1816-1895), said to have been "the greatest teacher of physiology that ever lived," was the director of the Physiological Institute of Leipzig. Osler called him "the Nestor of German physiologists. A man of enchanting personality," and noted that his students were to be found throughout the world.

7. According to William H. Welch, the great guiding influence of Johns Hopkins Medical School and a lifelong friend of Meltzer's, "the ten years ending 1890 were perhaps the most wonderful in the history of medicine."

8. Meltzer would swallow balloons and record the pressure changes during the act of swallow- ing. These recordings resulted in the Kronecker-Meltzer theory of deglutition. The experiments on which the theory was based were the first measurements of pressure changes in the esophagus, and Meltzer is regarded as the father of esophageal manometry.

9. W. H. Howell, "Biographical Memoir: S. J. Meltzer," in National Academy of Sciences, 1923 Annual Meeting, pp. 1-23. William H. Howell was professor of physiology at Johns Hopkins.

10. It is of interest that there was already a YMHA in Harlem. There was only one other physician.

I I. Both children, Clara and Victor, became doctors. 12. He was instrumental in forming at least ten societies which he chaired, and he belonged to

as many more. He was an active participant in all. He subscribed to some thirty-five medical and scientific journals which he read faithfully, and he helped found five new ones still extant.

I 3. Twice in his productive lifetime Meltzer was to encounter the formidable antagonist of a language barrier. He had to learn German when at nineteen he entered the Gymnasium in Konigsberg. He had to learn English at age thirty-three when he began practicing medicine in the United States. Little wonder that he never lost his German accent.

56 American Jewish Archives 14. Flexner offered Meltzer $1,000 a year, though he was later rather shamefacedly to claim

that "it was fifteen hundred for a part time job." Actually he was put on trial. There were no guarantees of advancement, yet Flexner knew that the bait was right. "Heretofore," said Meltzer, "I have always paid to work in laboratories. Now you propose to pay me to work in them. Of course, I will come." He gave up a very lucrative practice.

15. In one list of eighty-five papers presented to Flexner, twenty-six did not bear Meltzer's name and only fourteen bore his name alone.

16. On one occasion the influential Kronecker offered to propose Meltzer for the Nobel Prize, but Meltzer modestly and earnestly begged him not to, considering himself unworthy.

17. This proved of great importance during World War I, which was fought on the manure- laden battlefields of France, rich in tetanus sports. Magnesium sulphate is still used to control the convulsions of eclampsia in pregnancy.

18. Ether was administered through a tube narrow enough to allow egress of (expired) air, administered (inspired) under enough pressure to inflate the lungs without overinflating them.

19. The term "hormone" was introduced in 1905. zo. It is ironic that Meltzer was slowly dying of diabetes and yet was so close to the discovery of

insulin-just a short step away. 21. So far had he strayed from his father's religion. Cremation is anathema to Judaism. His

brother Joshua, whom he brought over to America, became a lawyer and legislator in Bridge- port, Connecticut. Joshua remained a Jew and became a leader of Conservative Judaism.

zz. The world was not ready then for such a noble gesture. The proponents of a similar movement today were recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Adolph Meltzer, M.D., is the author of a biography of Samuel James Meltzer which will be published by the Society of Experimental Biolo- gy and Medicine.

The Sephardic Immigrant from Bulgaria: A Personal Profile of Moise Gadol

Albert J . Amateau

The 150,000 Sephardic Jews in the United States are not generally included in written or oral considerations of the country's Ashkenazi Jewish community, five million strong. The Ashkenazi immigrants came from lands in Eastern Europe to escape discrimination, anti- Semitism, harassment, and pogroms. The great majority of the Sephardic immigrants came from lands in the Ottoman Empire where, in the fifteenth century, their ancestors had been made welcome by the sultans, following the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal.

During their five-hundred-year sojourn in the Ottoman Empire, they had not been subjected to discrimination, anti-Semitism, or mas- sacre. On the contrary, they had been granted freedom of religious observance under their semi-autonomous communal organizations, and the chief rabbi of each community had been recognized by the Ottoman government. Chief rabbis had the authority to enforce Jew- ish religious observances in regard to the dietary laws, Sabbath and holidays, marriage, divorce, circumcision, and burial. Jews were permitted to conduct their own community schools and to educate their children, using any language they desired. Moreover, they had the right to engage in any legal trade, occupation, or career, and to buy, sell, and own real property.

What motivated them, then, to emigrate from a country that treated them so well?

The underlying causes that led large numbers of Sephardim to come to the United States from the Ottoman Empire in the period from 1900 to 1914 deserve further research. Also deserving of notice are the aspirations of Moise Gadol to the leadership of the new arrivals, his establishment of La America, a weekly tabloid in Judeo-Spanish (the mother tongue of the majority of the immigrants), and the causes for his failure. It all constitutes part of the unpublished history of the Sephar- dic community in the United States.

Moise Gadol ( I 874-1 94 I ) :G,urrcn 01 Rabba %arc D Angel)


The Sephardic Immigration

Between 1900 and 1914, some 30,000 Sephardic immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island. Of these, 20,000 remained in New York. Others were attracted to opportunities for gainful occupation in other parts of the country. Even before the outbreak of World War I in 1914 there were sizable Sephardic communities in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Montgomery, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Se- attle.

Most of the immigrants were ill prepared, lacked knowledge of Eng- lish, and had no trade skills or business experience. A great many found work in menial jobs at low pay, in bakeries, restaurants, laun- dries, and an electric battery manufacturing plant where they performed the lowliest tasks. Others found employment as janitors in theaters and office buildings, while a few checked hats and coats for concessionaires in restaurants and night clubs.

Those among them who had attended the schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Turkey found that the French they had learned had no economic value in the United States. All could read enough Hebrew to recite the prayers, but most of them did not understand it. The majority spoke Judeo-Spanish as their mother tongue, but few could actually read or write the language, which was written with Hebrew Rashi characters.

Most of the immigrants were single men. Guided by HIAS they generally found accommodations as roomers or group tenants in walk-up tenement apartments on the Lower East Side in the area bounded by the Bowery, Clinton, Houston, and Canal Streets. At that time the area was largely settled by Romanian Jewish immigrants. The new immigrants could buy kosher foods and delicatessen, and by walking a few blocks on the other side of the Bowery, they could shop in Little Italy for olive oil (which they used instead of fat), olives, pungent cheeses, and the vegetables and fruits they were accustomed to from their native lands.

Working twelve and fourteen hours a day, cooking for themselves, laundering and tidying up their rooms did not leave much time for leisure, social, or religious activities and/or attending classes at the local public schools to learn English. Yiddish they did not know, and the strangely pronounced and peculiarly accented Hebrew of their Ashkenazi neighbors kept the newcomers away from the Jewish reli-

60 American Jewish Archives gious and cultural centers of the area. Most never learned to read and write English, though some did learn to speak it in the manner in which they heard it spoken. Few had any technical education or possessed the qualities or experience for leadership. The High Holy Days brought immigrants from the same city together to pray in rented halls.

Sephardic youth had emigrated to seek better economic opportunities, and in 1908-19 10, especially to escape the application of the new law enacted by the Turkish parliament making all non-Turks in the empire subject to military service.

Moise Gadol

In 1910 a newly arrived immigrant from Bulgaria seemed to stand out from all the other Sephardic immigrants. Moise Gadol was in his early fifties, well educated, amd fluent in a number of languages, including Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish. He appeared to be affluent and experienced in business. Disregarding his practical business experience, he became mesmerized with impractical schemes calculated to exploit the Sephardic immigrants under the guise of benevolent leadership.

Already past military age and experienced in business, Gadol seemed to have had no compelling leave Bulgaria. As a result, the Sephardic immigrants were' suspicious of him, ascribing ulterior motives to all his efforts to befriend and lead them. During his first few

I months in this country, as he met immigrants and attempted to interest them in his schemes for an organized community with a newspaper as its public relations organ, he was challenged again and again by a Judeo-Spanish saying: Beudico dio. Agora estamos en La America- kada uno por si ("Blessed God. We are now in America, where everyone is responsible for himselfn).

The death of two individuals, one in 1905 and the other in 1907, had made the immigrant Sephardim painfully aware of death and of their lack of the kind of communal facilities which back home automatically provided funeral services. But they mistrusted the idea of a formally organized community. They remembered their experiences in the old country with autocratic communal administrators, chief rabbis, and gevirim (communal notables) who arrogated to themselves the enforcement of conservative social and religious mores. They rejected as impractical Gadol's radical idea that the existing

American Jewish Personalities 61

group associations could be transformed into a communal organization with a chief rabbi to be brought from Turkey.

But Moise Gadol, intelligent though he was, had a one-track mind, an exaggerated ego, and the well-known stubbornness characteristic of Bulgarians. Oblivious to all opinions opposed to his schemes, he proceeded to implement his plan. As a first step he established a printing shop with roman and Hebrew type fonts, and launched an eight- page tabloid weekly newspaper in Judeo-Spanish with the title La America on its masthead. He employed two Ashkenazi Jewish typeset- ters who had to work with painstaking slowness, letter by letter, because they could recognize the Hebrew characters but did not know the Judeo-Spanish language.

Gadol's ill-conceived plans miscarried and all his subsequent efforts went awry. Yet he persevered and for a number of years made heroic efforts, both in personal dedication and investments of money, until, completely disillusioned, broke, and disheartened, he gave up. He stopped publication and disappeared. His health had suffered greatly and he died a broken man, saved from interment in potter's field by the timely rescue of few well-wishers.

The reasons that motivated Moise Gadol to aspire to leadership of the Sephardic immigrants, his persistence in publishing the weekly newspaper, and the causes for his failure deserve to be recorded as part of the early history of the Sephardic immigrants in America. I happen to be the only contemporary still alive who cooperated and collabo- rated with him in the initial stages of his efforts. I can see him now, as in a dream . . .

Gadol and the Author Meet

Midafternoon of an unseasonably cold day in September 1910, the chill in my unheated tenement room on Forsyth Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan had compelled me to seek comfort in A. Levy's coffee house a block away at the corner of Chrystie and Rivington Streets. Fellow Sephardic immigrants were seated around tables, sip- ping Turkish coffee and playing cards, dominoes, or backgammon. The doors were closed to retain whatever heat was given off by the large gas heater in the center of the room. A few nonplayers like myself sat beside the large plate-glass windows, watching the parade of peo-

6 2 American Jewish Archives ple walking gingerly in the snow dropped by the preceding night's storm.

A man peered through the window, hesitated a moment, and then slowly opened the door and came in. He was wearing a heavy overcoat with an Astrakhan collar, had a Russian-type kalpak on his head, pulled well down over his ears, and carried a heavy black, silver-headed walking stick in his gloved hand. The sudden draft of cold air caused everyone to look up toward the door. Instant suspicion was stamped on every face. He was an ajenou (stranger), and of course no one recognized him. The newcomer looked around slowly, scanning every face.

"Can I be of help to you, sir?" I volunteered. "Thank you." He spoke with a peculiar foreign accent that I

couldn't identify. He continued in Judeo-Spanish: "Isto bushkandou a1 Sinior Jack Farhi. Mi disheroun que aqui lou

puedou toupar." (I am looking for Mr. Jack Farhi. I was told I could find him here.)

Levy, the proprietor, entered the conversation to say that Farhi was expected. The stranger introduced himself. "Mi yamou Moise Gadol. Vengou di Bulgaria." (My name is Moise Gadol. I come from Bulgar- ia.)

"My name is Albert , and I come from Turkey." He asked if all the men present were from Turkey too. "The majority here are from Rhodes, a few from Gallipoli and the

Dardanelles." "Is this a holiday?" he asked. "Why do you ask?" "Seeing them here in the coffee house during the day. Don't they

work?" "Most of them are night workers. Some work for concessionaires or

own a concession where they sell refreshments or check coats and hats in hotels or night clubs. They will be gone soon to work from 6:go to past midnight."

He had a rather long face, swarthy completion, stood five foot seven or eight, a little rotund. He looked to be in his early fifties. The black hair on his head and his moustache was sprinkled with a few threads of white. His small hands looked well tended, indicating that he was not a manual worker. His small feet were shod in high-necked black


leather shoes buttoned on the side over which he wore rubber over- shoes.

He asked me: "How long have you been in America?" "Since last August." "You must have known English before you came." "Yes. I studied it

in school in Turkey." "What kind of work do you do?" "I am a movie projector operator." "Did you do that kind of work in Turkey?" "No. I was a graduate of the law school of the University of Istan-

bul." "Why did you emigrate?" "To escape military service." "What kind of work does Mr. Farhi do?" That question startled me,

and I could see that several men who were sitting nearby were surprised too.

"I thought you knew Mr. Farhi!" "No, I don't. A friend gave me his name and said that he is from

Bulgaria and that I could find him here." "Mr. Farhi sells insurance, helps immigrants with their personal

and family problems. He acts as arbitrator in business or personal controversies. He helps to organize religious and burial societies and acts as agent in the purchase of cemetery plots."

"You mean, there are many such societies?" "Oh, yes. The immigrant groups from the different cities in Turkey,

in Greece and Syria-each has its own religious and burial society and cemetery."

"Why not all one community?" he asked in wonderment. "They have so little in common. Each group is addicted to the dis-

tinct music of their prayers. They say they feel more comfortable among themselves than with people from other cities."

"What a shame! What a pity! They should be united in one community. They shouldn't imitate the Yiddishim."

"I agree with you, but it seems very difficult for them to overcome their mutual suspicions and prejudices." I noticed a folded Morgen Journal on his lap and asked: "Can you read Yiddish?"

"Yes, and German, and Bulgarian, some Russian, and Romanian." Then he noticed the book I held in my hand. It was Rambarn's More'

64 American Jewish Archives Nevuhim ("Guide for the Perplexed").

"Do you know Hebrew well enough to read your book in He- brew?"

"Yes. I had a good Hebrew education. My maternal grandfather, Rabbi MoshC Franco, chief rabbi of Rhodes, taught me a great deal during my annual vacations with him in Rhodes."

When Jack Farhi arrived I introduced them. After a few prelimina- ries in Judeo-Spanish, Gadol conversed with Farhi in Bulgarian. As I rose to leave, he extracted a card from a fine leather wallet and offered it to me, asking for my card in return. I wrote my address on a piece of paper and told him I had no card or telephone. He lived on Seventh Avenue in Harlem, considered a desirable residential area at the time.

Gadol's Proposal

A few days later I received a note from Gadol inviting me for lunch in a restaurant on Lenox Avenue at 11 ~ t h Street. His wife, Rachel, a short, buxom woman of forty or forty-five, sat quietly throughout our conversation of almost an hour. Their attire was definitely a cut above what was available to most of us immigrants, and he told me that he had been a successful merchant in Bulgaria, engaged in the export/ import trade with Austria and Germany. Try as I did, then and later, I could not get him to tell me why he had decided to leave Bulgaria.

The Gadols had no children, and both were ardent Zionists. He asked if I would help him organize a Sephardic community with a Zionist orientation, and my answer was direct.

"I would be happy to help organize a community but without Zionist ties. As I understand the Zionist program, it is to establish in Palestine a political home for Eastern European Jews. As subjects of the Turkish sultan we have been treated with tolerance and consideration, and therefore the Jews of Turkey cannot afford to take a position favorable to Zionism, for it would be considered subversive. I will not advocate Zionism. We must do nothing to jeopardize the safety of our people in Turkey. If the Zionists obtain the sultan's consent, it would be a different story."

Farhi had told Gadol that most of the Sephardic immigrants were almost completely unschooled, that they had come from the poorest and lowest social classes in Turkey. They had no ideals; their sole aim


was to make money. They had only a fanatical adherence to religious observance, and their interest in religion was confined to the High Holidays and to religious burial. Farhi maintained that it was too early to interest them in a formal community.

I agreed with Farhi's analysis but not his conclusions. I suspected that Farhi and the group leaders had other reasons for opposing the formation of a community and for their reluctance to discuss the subject. The group leaders were in the business of selling insurance or jewelry to the immigrants, guiding them to lawyers and doctors, re- cruiting them as workers for factories, acting as arbitrators in controversies, and selling cemetery plots. An organized community structure would deprive them of their group leadership, their influence, and their business perquisites. It was in their own self-interest that they opposed the formation of a communal organization.

Farhi had told Gad01 that I had organized the Brotherhood of Rhodes and was teaching elementary English to a class of ten Sephar- dic adults.

"You are a young and progressive leader. We should work together. The Yiddish press is full of maneuverings by the Jewish communal politicians for and against the formation of a general Jewish community, a Kehillah, by Rabbi Judah Magnes, one of the rabbis of Temple Emanu-El. He is a liberal who became Orthodox through his adherence to Zionism, yet he is being sponsored and financed by wealthy German Jews."

"Why are they doing it?" "For self-protection, and to control the masses of Yiddish immi-

grants from Eastern Europe, just as we should control the Sephardic immigrants.

"You and I should have a talk with Rabbi Magnes and through him obtain financial support for a Sephardic community and for a weekly newspaper in Judeo-Spanish to serve as our medium of propaganda. With such support and with the veiled threat in the paper of unmask- ing them, the leaders would not dare continue to oppose the formation of a Sephardic community. I am sure Rabbi Magnes would be interested in the prevention of societies like landmanshaften."

He persuaded me to join him in pleading the cause of a Sephardic community.


La America

A week later Rabbi Magnes summoned Joseph Gedalecia to meet with him in the Jewish Charities Building at 3 5 6 Second Avenue, where the Kehillah had its office. Gedalecia was the manager of the Bureau for the Placement of the Handicapped of the Jewish Community. Rabbi Magnes delegated him to investigate the merits of our proposal. It turned out that Gedalecia was a native of Istanbul; his mother was Sephardic and his father was DonmC. Gedalecia had been educated at the German Buerger Schule in Istanbul, and was fluent in English, German, French, Judeo-Spanish, Turkish, and Yiddish. He had been a social worker for the city of New York at Bellevue Hospital prior to organizing the Bureau for the Jewish Handicapped.

In ensuing meetings Gadol discussed his plans in detail and asked for Gedalecia's help. Gedalecia reported to Magnes that the Sephardic group leaders were absolutely opposed to a community, but that they might agree to join a federation of societies under which each group would maintain its own identity while participating in joint discussions of communal affairs. The leaders, as delegates to such a federation, would meet, get acquainted, and perhaps eventually trust each other sufficiently to agree to the formation of a community. He endorsed Gadol's proposed weekly in Judeo-Spanish and recommended an annual subvention of $10,000.

At that time we were not aware that the wealthy German Jews, the power behind the Kehillah, were opposed to Zionism. Gadol was asked to submit a detailed report on his project and he had emphasized Zionism. He was led to believe that his project was being seriously considered, but nothing happened. Becoming impatient, Gadol established a small print shop on Rivington Street near the Bowery, and early in November 1910 he launched La America.

Relations with Shearith Israel

The Kehillah's refusal to sponsor either a federation or a Judeo-Span- ish weekly came in the form of a proposal which, at first blush, looked promising. Cyrus Sulzberger, married to a Sephardic lady, was a trustee of Temple Emanu-El and, as we later discovered, a spokesman for Jacob Schiff, Felix Warburg, the Wertheimes, the Seligmans, the Lehmans, the Lewisohns, and other German Jews who were promi-


nent in Jewish communal affairs. He proposed that Shearith Israel, recognized as the Sephardic religious entity in New York, be asked to sponsor and guide the proposed federation and the publication of the weekly.

Gedalecia and I met with Rabbi Mendes, the minister of Shearith Israel, Rabbi Pool, his assistant, and N. Taylor Phillips, one of the congregation's foremost lay leaders, but Gadol pleaded inability to join us. The Shearith Israel leaders, without definitely committing themselves, promised to be helpful.

Gedalecia won considerable influence among the Sephardic immigrants by securing jobs for them through the Bureau for the Handi- capped, declaring them eligible for the agency's services on the grounds that their lack of industrial skills and their ignorance of Eng- lish were handicaps. However, this activity gained him the secret animosity of some of the group leaders.

The first meeting to organize a federation was also attended by officers of Shearith Israel. Gedalecia acted as temporary chairman and was elected president, defeating three group leaders who had been nominated. Gadol had asked some of the delegates to place his name in nomination for the presidency, but no one did.

Two names were proposed for the organization: New York Sephar- dic Federation and Federation of Oriental Jews. The Shearith Israel delegation favored the latter name, arguing that Jews from Arab countries, Morocco, Yemen, Persia, and India could be won over to a federation with the "Oriental" appellation.

Gadol did not object or seem displeased. Later he confided to me that he had not objected because he had been afraid to displease the Shearith Israel leaders. He claimed that they had promised him their financial backing for the publication of the weekly. Later he criticized them in an article for reneging on "the promise made to me by Rabbi de Sola Pool."

Federation Problems

I had been elected secretary of the Federation of Oriental Jews. At that first meeting and before the election took place, Gadol had

attempted in a rambling speech to offer his own candidacy as president and dwelt on the importance and the need for a news medium for the Federation and the societies. He moved that the Federation, in

6 8 American Jewish Archives formulating its budget, make provision for a subvention of $6,000 to La America. When no one else seconded his motion, I did. Many spoke in opposition, maintaining that it was premature for a new organization, unsure of its income, to commit itself to supporting a privately owned newspaper. In addition, the Arabic- and Greek- speaking delegates were opposed to a newspaper in Judeo-Spanish because that was not the language of their constituents and therefore it would not serve their interests.

Gadol could not take defeat with good grace. I found myself pleading with him to support Gedalecia and the Federation, and to trust the few of us who favored subventing his paper to find a way eventually to accomplish that aim. He became morose and uncooperative, and initi- ated a campaign against Gedalecia. He entitled his first attack "An Ashkenazi Should Not Be the Head of a Sephardic Organization." He refused to recognize that Gedalecia was not an Ashkenazi, and that even if he were, no one except Gadol himself wanted the presidency because of the effort and time the office demanded.

Failure and Bitterness

The meager advertising Gadol obtained from business establishments and professionals who catered to Sephardic immigrants hardly covered the cost of paper and printing. He depended on job printing to make ends meet. The few readers of the paper resented his constant criticisms and moralizing. His frequent articles advocating Zionism caused resentment because his readers saw the Zionists as jeopardiz- ing the historical bond of friendship and understanding between Jew and Turk.

Three young Sephardic immigrants, Moise Soulam, Moise Varsano, and Albert Levy, worked for Gadol for a while, but left him and launched a rival weekly in Judeo-Spanish. Their paper, La Vara, was published in a humorous vein accompanied by rough cartoons. In one of the articles in La Vara, poking fun at his serious and solemn style, Gadol was called "Yermiah el choron" (Jeremiah the lamenter). Soon, whenever Gadol appeared at a meeting or social gathering, word was whispered around, "Yermiah el choron is here."

Being ridiculed hurt Gadol deeply. He was unable to understand that a newspaper supposedly dedicated to serving a community could not be used to further his own capricious ideas. La America was 'his


baby. He sacrificed money, time, effort, and leisure, and he was going to use it just as he saw fit.

Within two years, without the subvention of funds from any outside source, his private resources were depleted and he was having a difficult time making ends meet. He was still wearing the clothing he had brought from Bulgaria. He smoked incessantly. He had become extremely short-tempered. His resentment at having lost out in the Fed- eration presidency, at having been denied the help he thought he de- served in publishing La America, at Shearith Israel's "reneging" on its promise, all made him very intolerant. Full of self-pity, he considered himself a victim for having devoted his money and efforts to a community which did not appreciate him.

His bitterness was patent in his writing, and his exhortations and actions fostered antagonism and active opposition by many in the community. He would go out of his way to praise and then suddenly turn on them with criticisms and attacks.

Moise Gadol's openly avowed aims were to influence the Sephardic immigrants into merging their religious and burial societies into a Sephardic community capable of providing the social, religious, and cultural services they needed, to alert the community to its responsibility to future Sephardic immigrants, and to prepare facilities for their reception and guidance.

His secret, unspoken aims were to advocate Zionism and propagate its adoption by the Sephardic community, and as a leader of the Sephardic community, to wield political influence in New York City.

Profit-making was not his principal motivation. He could have been successful in other endeavors for which he had ample qualifications. The risks he took, the frustrations he endured, the efforts he continu- ously made assuredly indicated his determination to achieve political aims he considered worthwhile. His ego and bulldog tenacity did not permit him to stop publishing La America until he was destitute.

The frustrations and privations he had endured soured him to the point of paranoia, bringing him animosity, ostracism, and a pauper's death.'

Note

I . For a published assessment of Moise Gadol, see Marc D. Angel, La America: The Sephardic Experience in the United States (1982).


Albert J. Amateau was born in Milas, Turkey, in 1889. At the age of 101, he is still fully active in a number of interests, especially in foreign-language translation for business and industrial films and in maintaining the heritage of Turkey's Sephardic Jewish community.

Rethinking the American Jewish Experience

The ~ m e i i c a n synagogue World of Yesterday, 1901-1925

Herman Eliot Snyder

Because my father, z"1, had a "wanderlust" we moved many times from city to city. True, a rolling-stone gathers no moss but does gather experience. These are memories of unusual synagogue experiences during the first quarter of this century in this country.

I was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts-then a world-famous whaling and international port, and one of the largest cities in Ameri- ca. At that time there was a large Jewish immigrant population from Eastern Europe. The previous Jewish population were Sephardim from the Caribbean islands remembered by their old cemetery.

There were two Orthodox synagogues in this city not because of the number of Jews but because one served a concentration of Jews who lived on the north side, and the other in the opposite end of the city where there was another concentration of Jews. Both were Orthodox. Since it was forbidden to ride on the Sabbath, Orthodox synagogues in America (where Jews do not live in concentrated areas) were many so as to be within walking distance of the people.

Each of these two synagogues, which are no more, had unique features, perhaps imported from Europe.

One synagogue had a "well" before the ark-an area about a yard square which was about one inch lower than the rest of the floor. It was here that the leader stood when conducting services. That was to literally fulfill the observation of the biblical psalmist: "Out of the depths I cry unto the Lord" (Psalms 130: I).

The other synagogue had two unusual features. I. On the street level, where daily services were conducted, there

was an adjoining room for the women which was sometimes called "the women's shul" (synagogue). This was a complete and total separation of the men and women. Neither could see the other. That room had its own entrance. There was a fairly large opening at the very top

72 American Jewish Archives of the partition between the two rooms so that the women might hear and follow and participate in the service.

Despite this strict separation of the men and women, a young girl, perhaps sixteen years old, would enter the men's section to recite the Kaddish for a parent. No one ever made protest or even a comment.

2. The Sabbath and holiday services were conducted "upstairs" on the second floor. It had a formal setting with an ornate ark at one end and a reading desk in the center of the hall.

The women occupied its balcony, which was of an unusual design. This balcony stretched more than half-way across the floor below. That made it almost impossible for anyone on the balcony to see anyone on the floor below, or for anyone below to catch a glimpse of anyone on the balcony. Those on the balcony could see the ark, and could hear the conduct of the service.

In most of the synagogues membership in our modern sense was practically unknown. A few did pledge a regular sum, but most did not. Contributions in the form of pledges were made when participating in the Torah service, contributing for the shul and/or rabbi and/or cantor and/or Talmud Torah and/or other causes. But the chief source of revenue for the shul came with the High Holy Days with the "sale" of seats and "honors." Perhaps the highest honor was to chant the Maftir at Neilah, the Yom Kippur Day concluding service-chanting the Book of Jonah. Universally that honor was most sought and went to the highest bidder.

I. In New Bedford a widow wanted "Der Roiter" (the Red One) to bid and purchase that honor at her expense, and to have him chant it in memory of her husband. Der Roiter was so named because he had reddish-hair and a reddish goatee. He also was considered a pious man.

Everyone knew her wishes, and saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of the situation-for the benefit of the shul, of course. The bidding went up and up, a full quarter at a time. The excitement grew. Der Roiter implored the widow to save her money, but she was adamant. The competing bidder was becoming uneasy, for fear he would be "stuck with it" if she quit outbidding him-so caution finally made him stop raising the ante. That year the Haftarah Jonah went for the unheard-of new record of $I 2.7 5 !

2. The very next year we were in Reading, Pennsylvania. Without

Rethinking the American Jewish Experience 7 3 any prompting the three Luria brothers pledged $1,000 for that hon- or-as was their annual custom, with none to compete.

3. In Paterson, New Jersey, Nathan Barnert was a generous philan- thropist who gave and built a temple, the Jewish hospital, a Jewish home for the aged, and a Free Talmud Torah which also conducted services. (Mr. Barnert had been mayor of the city, one of only two men in America who had a monument erected by citizens while alive.) Each year he attended the Yom Kippur Neilah service at the Free Talmud Torah, chanting Jonah, for which he took care of the annual deficit.

At the turn of the century and for yet a score of years, many streets were still illuminated by gas, and lamp-lighters were still to be seen both evening and morning. Most homes were lighted by gas and/or kerosene lamps which were cleaned daily and their wicks trimmed. Homes were heated by coal stoves and grates, assisted by gas stoves.

With the advent and increase of electric lights, they became a must and a status symbol. Cities proudly displayed them in profusion. Prac- tically every city had at least one busy downtown intersection with huge arcs criss-crossing, each arc with scores of colored bulbs. The horses sometimes bolted at the sight. People actually made a trip to see them.

Buildings indicated their modernity by the number of electric lights. New synagogues of that era (up to about 191 s ) , and newly renovated synagogues which replaced their gas lights, installed electric lights promiscuously and in great number. Although a few, a limited number, would have been sufficient, what was important was the number. The more the better. People soon discovered that they not only shed light but also heat. The heat radiated by the lights became unbearable. Everyone was grateful when a light burned out, not to be replaced.

About 1909 a new synagogue was dedicated in New Castle, Penn- sylvania, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon with considerable pomp. The officials, the rabbi and cantor, and other dignitaries were dressed in their Prince Albert coats and wore glistening high hats. The Torahs were ceremoniously removed from the old building, and lovingly held by those signally honored. They rode in burnished buggies, of course-drawn by beautifully curried and groomed horses-leather and brass highly polished. Most of the people marched in the parade from the old synagogue to the new. The procession moved slowly and in orderly fashion.

7 4 American Jewish Archives This was the day they had waited for. Ceremoniously they marched

into the new synagogue, which sparkled with its hundred or more electric lights. All was light and joy.

All was quiet and serene when suddenly bedlam erupted. A man was shouting and pointing at the two menorah-one on either side of the ark. Each menorah had seven large bright electric lights. Seven lights! That was a desecration, a sin, a disgrace, an outrage! And in a Jewish house of worship! The seven-lighted menorah belongs only in the one Holy Temple in Jerusalem-and nowhere else!

Many voices were raised in a shouting-match with proponents and opponents. It quickly became a riot, short of physical violence. One man, unnoticed, removed the center light from each menorah. People began pointing at the menorah-each menorah now with only six lights. And calm was restored.

In a sense two services were conducted simultaneously on the Sab- bath-the one by the men and the other by the women.

Die lezerke (the reader) was greatly beloved among the women on the balcony at services. She was the one who could read the Hebrew prayers. Those who could not would crowd around her, forming a huddle. They felt that somehow by being in physical touch with her they, too, vicariously had recited the prayers.

But it was more than the Hebrew prayers that the lezerke read. During the Torah reading she would read aloud to the women from a book in Yiddish (the Tzene Urenna), which gave the essence of the Torah portion enriched with midrashim or anecdotes. It may be that the women received more from the weekly Torah reading than did the men.

A woman stopped a Sabbath morning service in 1911 in Akron, Ohio.

On Saturday mornings we always arrived at the synagogue long before the start of the services. There was a group of men who always came early and visited with each other. It was a weekly Sabbath ritual.

But this morning it was different. There was an air of excitement. Men were gathered in small huddles. Voices were low, muted, conspir- atorial. It was obvious that something serious had happened. Appar- ently a woman claimed she had a grievance and had threatened to stop the service. They were considering what to do if that were to happen.

The service began and continued more quietly than usual. There

, Rethinking the American Jewish Experience 7 5 was an air of expectation-and of uncertainty about what might happen. We were now midway in the service. The Torah had been removed from the ark. It was now on the reading desk in the center. One could sense a feeling of relief-nothing had happened.

Suddenly there was a stir in the balcony among the women. A hush immediately fell on the congregation. A woman arose from her seat. With firm, measured step she made her way to the stairway. We could hear the echo of her steps on the wooden floor. We heard her descend step by step. Without a pause she marched into the men's section with determination. She strode to the center of the congregation, to the desk on which lay the Torah open for reading. She stretched out her arms and said, "I forbid the continuation of this service until I shall have received justice." It sounded like a rehearsed legal formula.

Much to my amazement there was no protest-no attempt to continue the service-not a voice raised. One man stepped forward. It seemed that he had been chosen or delegated to be the spokesman. Calmly he said to her in a quiet, conversational tone, "We faithfully promise to give you a hearing tonight after the conclusion of the Sab- bath. Will you permit us to continue the service?"

She said, "Yes." The service continued. I never knew what her grievance was or what might have been the

ultimate outcome of her plea. In 1905 a rabbi threatened to walk out on a wedding in Columbus,

Ohio, and almost did so. The wedding was to take place in a very large hall on the third floor

of a downtown building. The room was brightly and blindingly lighted and warm with its many electric lights. The guests were gathered, awaiting the arrival of the rabbi.

We could hear him laboriously ascending the stairs. He now stood at the broad entrance to the hall. He made an impressive figure with his silvery-white hair and beard which glistened in the light. He wore a Prince Albert coat and a high hat-the silk lapels of his coat and the sheen of his hat reflected the light, almost mirror-like.

The rabbi stood at the door, looking over the audience with a benign smile of cordiality and friendliness. These were his people. This was a "simcha"--a happy occasion. Then he looked down at the white run- ner on the floor leading to the wedding canopy. Suddenly his features underwent a transformation. His face darkened. He seemed to be try-

76 American Jewish Archives ing to say something. He seemed to be on the verge of a stroke, of apoplexy.

Finally the rabbi sputtered with some coherence. Pointing to the huppah he shouted that it was a desecration. He had been insulted. He had never seen anything like it in all his life. He would not conduct the wedding. He turned on his heels, made for the stairway.

Some men jumped to detain him. They gathered around him on the stairwell to prevent him from descending. What had affronted him were three flowers which had been pinned to the front overhang on the huppah. Flowers on a huppah? Those flowers were a no-no. That was not Jewish!

Someone removed the three now wilted flowers, and the rabbi vic- toriously entered the hall and performed the wedding.

The rabbi spoke the truth-he had never seen anything like that before. In the shtetl from which he came he had never seen a flower on a huppah. Sixty years later I witnessed a wedding in an Orthodox synagogue, participated in by several internationally famous Sephar- dic and Ashkenazic rabbis; and the huppah was completely covered with white flowers.

In my experience in those years, in every synagogue in every city where I lived, there were two holidays which were used for securing assistance for those in need. We prepared for the observance of our Jewish holidays by first concerning ourselves with our needy.

I. We took seriously the behest to dwell in a succah during the holiday of Succos. The chill of the season and the inclement weather made us keenly aware of the situation of those who had to live through the winter in succah-like houses without heat or food.

At services contributions were solicited. It was the poor helping the poorer. Some offered a quarter ton of coal, and a few offered as much as a half ton! Some offered a bushel of potatoes or other foodstuffs. Actually the money was given for the purchase of these quantities. In preparation for the winter months, in those days people bought and stored food by the barrel and bushel, and the coal bin was filled.

2. Preparation for Passover began about a month before the holiday (at least beginning with the month of Nisan, when Passover is ob- served) with money contributions for maos hitim (the purchase of wheat), which reflected the time when people bought and ground their own grain into flour and baked their own matzo.

Rethinking the American Jewish Experience 77 Maos hitim became a euphemism for helping those in need so that

they, too, might observe and celebrate Passover in happiness. What was involved was far more than enough matzo, wine and food for a Seder or two; far more than even a Passover basket (similar to a modern Thanksgiving basket). The intention was to also clothe and take care of the needs of the people. These families came to services in their new suits, dresses, and shoes. They really celebrated Passover, and it was a happy holiday for all.

The "midnight hour" for the first Selihot service on the Saturday night three or more days before Rosh Hashonnah varied in different communities. The tradition was that it must be sometime after midnight and before dawn. It was only in more recent years that the service was conducted as early as an hour after midnight.

Most of these communities conducted the service either at three or five in the morning-Sunday morning. New Castle actually had a man who knocked at our door to awaken us in the European tradition of a klapper (knocker).

It was an eerie experience to walk down the abandoned streets so dimly lighted by the gaslights; to hear the echo of our steps in the silent night which sounded so loud; to hear the occasional baying of the many neighborhood dogs. Then we came within sight of the synagogue, all aglow in the dark of night, with its windows pouring out rays of light. The hour and sense of aloneness gave a special meaning to that service.

The service was always impressive. Even congregations which had no cantor would secure one for this service and the High Holy Days. Congregational cantors who normally had no choir would train one for these services. Now cantor and choir sang their best. This was more than just a service. It was an opportunity to demonstrate what might be expected at the following holiday services, and to persuade those who had not made seat reservations to do so. I never heard a sermon or a word spoken except for the announcement that the committee on seating was in the foyer prepared to accommodate those who had made no arrangements.

In the foyer, on a table, were a number of plates for contributions. Each-plate had a slip of paper identifying itsxecipient. Some slips that I remember identified plates for rabbi, cantor, shul, talmud torah, sha- mas (sexton).

78 American Jewish Archives Evoking tears was the primary attempt at Jewish funerals. Some

psychologists would say this is a desirable and laudable thing to do- to give release to grief. Tears were considered to be a valuable gift. A midrash relates that when Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, God gave them a precious parting gift-the ability to cry.

The cantor used his musical talents to "tear at the heart-strings." The hespit (eulogy) dwelt on such memories and themes as accen- tuated the significance of the loss. The excellence of the address was judged by the number of people who were moved to tears.

Some claimed that this effort was exercised to impress "heaven" with the importance of the deceased individual. The departed was being given a "send-off" and an introduction if necessary.

Mourners, professional and nonprofessional, were present at funerals of people with whom they were not related or associated in any way.

The last professional mourner (known as a beshraier in Yiddish) that I remember was an attractive, middle-aged, buxom, happy woman). She was always smks and laughter. Her laughter was contagious. I saw her walking with a companion to a house of mourning-laugh- ing and telling a story. In the midst of the story they reached the door; immediately on entering, without a pause, she raised her arms, began weeping and shrieking about her bitter loss, etc.

In a few moments others began to sob. She acted as though she were about to faint and became the center of attention as people attempted to revive her. Finally she left with her friend, and now outside, across the threshold, resumed her story as though nothing had happened!

A family some years from Eastern Europe, now living on the third floor of a house, had a death. Immediately one of the family went out to purchase a bale of hay, spread it over the floor of the bedroom, and placed the body on it. That was the practice in the shtetl from which they had come, where the floors were covered with hay. When someone died, they would spread fresh hay on the floor so as not to place the body on the dirty hay. The family now regarded the spreading of hay as mandatory.

Dr. Herman Eliot Snyder is the rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple, Spring- field, Massachusetts.

An Unpublished Letter from Mordecai Kaplan to Martin Weitz

41 5 Central Park West New York 25 , N.Y.

Feb. 4, I955

Rabbi Martin W. Weitz Atlantic City, N. J.

Dear Rabbi Weitz, I am very glad that I was able to be a visitor at the

Conference of the World Union for Progressive Judaism which took place in London in July 1953. I thus happily learned at first hand something about the "World Union" that is not generally known namely that it has actually lived up to the purpose implied in its full name. Having started out virtually with the limited purpose of combating any Zionist version of Judaism, it has progressed beyond that purpose and is now serving the need of fostering all non-Orthodox versions of Judaism, be they Liberal, Conservative, or Zionist.

As soon as I returned to the United States I communicated with Rabbi Joseph Raush of Louisville, Ky., urging him to see to it that the forthcoming conference of the World Union be held in Jerusalem. I pointed out that it was extremely important that the voice of Progressive Judaism should be heard particularly there. In the first place, the Jews in Israel have to be made to understand that there is a third alternative to orthodoxy and secularism. Secondly, the Jews of the Diaspora have to be made to realize that they cannot afford to be indifferent to what happens to Jewish religion in Israel.

No Jew anywhere in the world can be spiritually secure, should the State of Israel, God forbid, be destroyed as a result of

80 American Jewish Archives the bitter religious conflicts that are going on there at present. We have more to fear from the pro-Jewish than from the anti-Jewish fanatics, from the political and religious terrorists fighting for Jews and Judaism than from the bitterest anti-Semites and worst intransigent Arabs. The World Union for Progressive Judaism can have no more urgent and imperative task than to rally all its Liberal, Conservative and Zionist forces to forestall the outbreak of a religious civil war in Israel. Let us not forget that Jerusalem fell to the Romans in the 70, because she had been weakened by the inner civil strife among the Jews themselves.

Unfortunately, the Zionists, in their pre-occupation with the immediate tasks and problems, have failed to take into account what it means to build a modern democratic state with human material that intellectually and religiously belongs to the Dark Ages. None of us is exempt from the consequences of this terrible oversight. All Jews who have in them any- wisdom and sense of responsibility must unite in an effort to bring about some modus vivendi among the various religious and non-religious elements in Israel. In the interests of enlightened and ethical religion it is essential that the rabbinate be separated from the state and be deprived of the power to impose its authority on all dissidents from orthodoxy.

What more important purpose could the World Union for Progressive Judaism have at present, and what more effective means then convening in Jerusalem to carry out that purpose? The conference s.cheduled to take place in Paris should, therefore, in my opinion, take action leading to the holding as soon as possible of a conference in Jerusalem.

Sincerely yours, Mordecai M. Kaplan

Rabbi Martin W. Weitz is associated with Temple Judea, Laguna Hills, California.

Book Reviews

Brinner, William M., and Rischin, Moses, Edited by. Like All the Na- tions: The Life and Legacy ofJudah L. Magnes. Albany: State Univer- sity of New York Press, 1987. 241 pp.

This collection of fourteen articles is the product of an international symposium held at the University of California-Berkeley in 1982 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Judah L. Magnes Me- morial Museum. Among the participants were some of the foremost American and Israeli scholars of modern Jewish history: Marc Lee Raphael, Arthur Goren, Evyatar Friesel, and Melvin Urofsky on Mag- nes's "American period," and David Biale, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Arnold J. Band, and Bernard Wasserstein on the "Palestinian" seg- ment of his life.

It is in the Jewish tradition to remember only the virtues of the dead. However, it is to be questioned whether charity alone is a substitute for good scholarship. Sadly, too many of the papers here are superficial, uncritical eulogies to Magnes that fail to break new ground. Professor Rischin sets the tone in his introduction: "No one had labored more ardently and more selflessly in the cause of peace in the Middle East" than Magnes (p. I); and, writing in the aftermath of the 1982 Lebanon War, Rischin exceeds his literary license by seeing the Israeli critics of that war as "latter-day surrogates" for Magnes (p. 2).

Professor Be ard Wasserstein, perhaps sensing that he is in a mi- nority, opens h i" s penetratingly eloquent paper with the suggestion that Magnes himself would have been the last person to have favored an uncritical celebration of his life and legacy" (p. 187).

Arthur Goren, editor of Magnes's papers, entitled, appropriately, Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes (Harvard, 1982), reviews Magnes's several careers. Magnes held three different pulpits between 1904 and 19 I 2, leaving each in stormy controversy. Over the next ten years he served in a score of communal capacities,

8 2 American Jewish Archives most notably as elected chairman of the Jewish communal experiment in New York, the Kehillah. Founder of the Jewish Defence Association in 1917, Magnes went on to preach radical pacifism, defend Soviet Russia, and attack the Balfour Declaration as an imperialist ploy.

Professor Friesel has assessed Magnes's New York years as the most creative and successful in his life. However, the war brought to the surface fissures within the Jewish community that shattered Magnes's efforts to construct a unified and new American Judaism. In a short but incisive paper, Professor Band refers to Magnes's "brilliant failures in New York" (p. 155).

Magnes's vision of a new American Judaism, and later, his attempts to secure an Arab-Zionist rapprochement in Palestine, were based on his own experience of cultural pluralism, first in California and later in New York. Professor Goren has suggested a key to the apparently wild fluctuations in Magnes's career-that lie remained a rabbi in the tradition of American Reform Judaism: "merging the two roles of preacher and social activist he mirrored the Social Gospel in American Protestantism" (p. 59).

Of special interest are the papers by David Biale and Paul Mendes Flohr on Magnes's tenure at the Hebrew University. In 1922, Magnes joined those select few American Zionists who actually emigrated to Palestine. Yet, paradoxically, as Professor Friesel points out, Magnes never subscribed to any of the major Zionist goals, whether in the Diaspora or in Palestine: "Zionism was only the means to an end, never an end in itself" (p. 79).

He was appointed first chancellor and later president of the university. Professor Biale describes the clash between Magnes and Weiz- mann (and Albert Einstein), "men of great achievements, and, sad to say, even greater egos" (p. 133). Their feud was a reflection of the wider struggle then proceeding between those in the World Zionist movement who wanted to control Yishuv affairs from the Diaspora and the Yishuv's leaders in Palestine, who wanted to control their own destiny.

Weizmann disparaged Magnes's academic credentials, and feared that the latter might turn the university's Institute for Jewish Studies into a theological seminary. In turn, Magnes feared that Weizmann would politicize the university by subjecting it to the control of the Zionist Executive. In Biale's opinion, Magnes was naive to expect that

Book Reviews 8 3

the major Jewish academic enterprise in mandatory Palestine could remain aloof from Zionist nationalist aspirations and dreams.

Magnes himself was "kicked upstairs" to the honorary presidency of the university, though his efforts did help to keep it independent of the political functionaries.

It is a testimony to Magnes that he is now best known for his support of the Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace) movement in the latter 192os, and his leadership of the binationalist Ihud (Unity), which he helped set up in 1942, with a small group of university academics- Hugo Bergman, Gershom Scholem, Ernst Simon, Martin Buber. The story has already been told in its essentials by Susan Lee Hattis, The Bi-National Idea in Palestine During Mandatory Times (Tel Aviv: Shikmona, 1970)' and Magnes's own role has been filled out more recently by Professor Goren.

Professor Biale summarizes incisively: "the Ihud's call for bina- tionalism in the I ~ ~ O S , in the wake of the Holocaust and the Arab riots of the 1930s' was an idealistic exercise in futility if not naivete" (p.

136). Professor Wasserstein's cutting assessment is that the Magnes group

was "a small band of intellectuals on the political fringe of Zionism, a group which had negligible support among the Yishuv and one whose binationalist objectives were trampled into the dust by the onward rush of competing nationalist forces" (p. I 87).

The Zionist leadership in Palestine might have tolerated Magnes had he restricted himself to intellectual debate; but he took unauthor- ized political initiatives which the Yishuv's leadership regarded as harmful. Magnes simply misread the local political culture. Repeated- ly, he discovered that "the supposed basis for agreement was a fata morgana that evaporated whenever approached" (p. I 89).

Toward the end of his life, having failed in Palestine to secure agreement by consent, Magnes solicited American support to impose a solution-"precisely what [he] had been arguing against on moral grounds" (p. 195).

Professor Wasserstein derives one saving grace from Magnes's pa- thetic political failures-that he founded "the tradition of vigorous intellectual dissent which is such a crucial ingredient of Israeli political culture" (p. 197).

This is an uneven collection of essays, which could have benefited

84 American Jewish Archives from closer editing. There is much repetition of straight biographical detail, and the two papers presuming to compare Magnes with Henrietta Szold and Golda Meir tell us something about their authors (Joan Dash and Marie Syrkin, respectively) as hagiographers, but precious little about Magnes.

-Michael J. Cohen

Michael J. Cohen is Professor of History at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Among his best-known works are Churchill and the Jews (198 5 ) and Origins of the Arab-Zionist Conflict, 1914-1948. A forthcoming volume, Truman and Israel, is to be published by the University of Cali- fornia Press.

Greenberg, Simon, Edited by. The Ordination of Women as Rabbis: Studies and Responsa. Moreshet XIV. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1988. 223 pp.

The opening of the 1984-1985 academic year at the Jewish Theologi- cal Seminary of America (JTS) brought with it women enrolled in the rabbinical school. This marked a new stage in the decade-long dilem- ma involving the role of women within the Conservative movement. Underlying these deliberations were questions concerning the role of halakhah, tradition, ethical and social concerns, as well as the role of the modern rabbi, the nature of the sources, the identity of Conserva- tive Judaism, and who has the authority to make decisions.

This volume contains eleven articles detailing the debate at the Sem- inary. It includes an introduction by Gerson Cohen, the report of the Commission for the Study of the Ordination of Women as Rabbis by Gordon Tucker, and eight faculty papers-one of which is an English summary of a Hebrew paper which is also included. Several papers reflect a halakhic stance, while others approach the question from the historical and sociological aspects.

The papers are presented in alphabetical order and stand, for the most part, independent of each other. And that may capture the vexing nature of the whole issue. For unlike many controversies, no compro- mise solution is possible here. In searching for an answer-be it by halakhah or by ethical, social, cultural, and historical concerns-each posek (decisor) determines the weight of the various factors. Argu- ments are not impervious to time and place. Most important of all, Conservative Judaism has always considered its hallmark to be its recognition of the flexibility and fluidity of the halakhah.

Regarding the legitimacy of women rabbis, this concept is put to a full test. As Robert Gordis asserts in his paper, "The truth is that Halakhah neither sanctions nor forbids the ordination of women-it never contemplated the possibility" (p. 571). As a result, all the argumentation flows from the author's understanding of process. Because the role of women during the rabbinic and medieval periods in which the halakhah was formulated was limited to their relationships to hus- bands and homes, the texts which speak explicitly about women gen-


erally reflect the oft-stated idea that they are "feeble-minded" and lump them with minors, imbeciles, and others disenfranchised and barred from functioning in public. For those who argue from a halakhah limited by previous tradition, it is clear that even a woman who takes upon herself all of the religious obligations incumbent on men can never be the agent who enables a man to fulfill his obligation. Several papers take this stance.

Others approach the halakhah from the creativity inherent within it, a halakhah never monolithic, but developing in response to the ethical and social concerns of the time. Where women are specifically mentioned, halakahah enhances their position vis-a-vis the world in general. This argument sees an imperative to make sure that contemporary halakhah reflects modern ethical values.

The position ultimately endorsed is that of Joel Roth, who argues that a woman may perform mitzvot from which she is exempt and that such a self-imposed obligation can attain the same legal status as the obligation of men, which is "other-imposed." Thus, women who make themselves obligated may enter the rabbinical school and become rabbis.

I had the privilege of being at JTS during the first year in which women were enrolled in the rabbinical school. What was as clear from their actions as from these papers is that this question was always treated with the utmost respect for halakhah. Even those who wanted women to be admitted to the rabbinical school were willing to have this happen only if the halakhah could sustain such a decision. While both sides differed in their understanding of the elasticity and bounds of halakhah, its integrity remained and remains a sine qua non.

We live in an era unforeseen and unmatched in previous times. Such times call for unparalleled responses. After the fall of Jerusalem, Rab- bi Yochanan ben Zakkai sounded the shofar in Yavneh on a Rosh Hashanah which occurred on Shabbat. When confronted by the B'nai Betera, he responded that after the fact, an issue no longer warrants discussion (Rosh Hashanah 29b). Not making a decision about the ordination of women would have, in itself, been a decision. Now again the shofar has been sounded. As long as halakhah keeps pace with life, it can remain a vital force in the lives of those who treasure it.

-Judith A. Bluestein

Book Reviews 87

- -

Rabbi Judith A. Bluestein is Visiting Lecturer in Near Eastern Lan- guages and Cultures at Indiana University in Bloornington and a doc- toral candidate in Rabbinics at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Insti- tute of Religion.

Niers, Gert. Frauen schreiben im Exil. New York: Peter Lang, 1988.

209 PP.

Gert Niers's Frauen schreiben im Exil makes an important contribution to both women's studies and exile literature, largely because Margarete Kollisch, Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss, and Vera Lachmann, the three women whose poetic legacy he examines, are virtually unknown beyond the New York City area where they made their homes after leaving Germany and Austria as diaspora and Holocaust victims. Ex- posure to their work even then is confined to an audience and reader- ship within the parameters of the intellectual, German-speaking community of New York.

Though the circumstances under which they left were different, all three experienced loss and deprivation. Niers investigates the response of each to her loss and shows how their poetry shares in a common literary tradition (the influence, for example, of Rilke on Blumenthal- Weiss, of George on Lachmann) but also transcends that tradition with a poetic language that is unique to the dynamics of suffering and survival. A major strength of this book lies in the investigation of the latter, a sadly neglected area in Holocaust and exile research. In analyzing their poetic diction he makes an important distinction between the pain of loss as experienced by Blumenthal-Weiss and Lachmann and the pain of separation, as experienced by Kollisch. An appendage of fifteen representative poems from the oeuvre of each of the women provides the reader with material which is not generally accessible, at least not in the United States. We are left in little doubt at the end of Niers's book that all three deserve greater recognition as poets.

This book is a published dissertation and as such manifests a pre- dictably sensible organization, but the lack of structural elegance is more than compensated for by carefully documented scholarship. Niers is clearly in command of his subject and investigates with the vigor of a pioneer. Considering that this is the first analysis of the poetry of German-Jewish women in U.S. exile, his energy is all the more appropriate. In fact, he could have stressed the vanguard aspect of his book more; none of these women was even mentioned in the Germanistik publication Exile: The Writer's Experience (19 8 2) which

Book Reviews 89

includes a chapter on the lyric. Nor was there any reference to their existence in Anthony Heilbut's Exiled in Paradise (1983), an ency- clopedic cultural study which focuses exclusively on exiled artists and writers in the United States. A book on this subject is, therefore, long overdue, and its publication should spawn further research and, one would hope, translations into English of their poetry.

Though personally acquainted with all three women, Niers resists any intrusion of the gratuitously anecdotal and manages to sustain a scholarly style of writing which is in keeping with the seriousness and dignity of his subject. He deals with the life and work of the women separately and has organized his material thematically around the common issues of their identity as women, their Jewishness, and the implications of the Holocaust on their destiny. His insistence that these are interwoven and interdependent is a further strength of the book. Niers continually inserts references that link the three women, yet manages to portray and respect the individuality of each. The ef- fect is twofold: it sustains our interest and underscores the historical and political reality behind their exile. A brief conclusion summarizes the relative strengths of their lyrical output and attempts to position them in the larger framework of their contribution to literature.

Margarete Kollisch, his first subject, was born in Austria in 1893 and emigrated with her family to the United States in 1939; she died in Manhattan in 1979. Her lyrical output is contained in three volumes, all published in Vienna: Wege und Einkehr. Ausgewahlte Gedichte (1960), Unverlorene Zeit. Ausgewahlte Gedichte und Betrachtungen (1971), and Riickblendung. Gedichte und Prosa (198 I). Niers points out that her poems had been published in anthologies before her emigration and that her apparent late blooming in the United States was the direct result of having to forgo literary activities to earn a living and adjust to a new country. He identifies the central theme of her work as the recapturing of childhood memories and ascribes this to a deliberate act of resistance against loss, a perception, one might add, that is generally held about poetry written in exile.

Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss was born in Berlin in 1899 and was by training and profession an orthopedic specialist. She wrote poetry from an early age, an interest that was to lead to the publication of her first volume of verse, Gesicht und Maske, in 1929 and to a correspondence with Rilke which was published in Briefe aus Muzot in 1935. Unlike

90 American Jewish Archives Kollisch and Lachmann, llse Blumenthal-Weiss was subjected to the horror of the concentration camp and lost both her son and her husband to Mauthausen and Auschwitz. Survivors of Theresienstadt, Blumenthal-Weiss and her surviving daughter emigrated to the United States in 1947. Three volumes of her verse were published in the Fed- eral Republic: Schliisselwunder in 1954, Mahnmal in 1960, and Ohnesarq in 1984. She died in 1987 in Connecticut after many active years as a highly respected scholar and poet in the German intellectual community of New York City.

The youngest of the three, Vera Lachmann, was born in Berlin in 1904 and died in Manhattan in 1985. A scholar of the classics and of philology, Lachmann was briefly if peripherally acquainted with the George group, an involvement that was rudely shattered by the events of the post-19 3 3 period which led to her emigration in 19 3 9 to the United States. Niers provides the interesting biographical detail: for example, that Lachmann was involved in helping Nelly Sachs escape from Nazi Germany to Sweden. Though residing in New York (she taught a t Brooklyn College from 1949 to 1974), Lachmann spent her summers directing a summer camp for the arts in North Carolina, which accounts for the intensity of her relationship to nature. (One is reminded of Paul Zech's poetry and the comfort he received in his South American exile from a cosmic relationship.) Lachmann's poetic legacy is contained in three volumes all published in Holland: Golden tanzt das Licht im Glass (1969), Namen werden Inseln (1975), and Halmdiamanten (19 82). Lachmann's lyrical output, he argues, was shaped as much by her classical background as by her Jewishness. The Holocaust is not overtly a theme in her work, as it is in Blumenthal- Weiss's, but Niers is careful to point out that the emotional landscapes of Lachmann's verse reflect that she was traumatized by it.

A recurring feature of Niers's critical prose is to define his subject by what it is not. Thus, Lachmann's nature poetry is perceived as not ecologically motivated, and in general the poetry of all three is described as not being technically innovative. Yet, he insists, it is not for the most part the work of epigones. He is particularly tentative when attempting to relate their work to feminism, and his reference to the fact they do not belong in ecriture fkminine is unnecessary and distracting, especially since he has defined their identity so persuasive- ly. One senses, however, that this defensive attitude springs from a

Book Reviews 91 deep sensitivity toward his subject and is a minor flaw associated with pioneer study.

When asked in an interview if she perceived herself as a witness to a past with which she had not come to terms, Blumenthal-Weiss replied: "Whenever I write a poem and want to write about the sun, the night keeps coming through" (Ohnesarq, p. 76). Niers's book gives us a deeper understanding of the dark sayings of three women who somehow were also able to tell of the sun.

-Ruth Schwertfeger

Ruth Schwertfeger is Associate Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Women of Theresien- stadt: Voices from a Concentration Camp (1989) .

Panitz, Esther L.-Simon Wolf: Private Conscience and Public Image. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1987. 225 pp.

Esther Panitz acknowledges in the very first sentence of her introduction that Simon Wolf is only a "footnote" in American history. Yet Panitz has written what she declares is a "selective" biography. As she explains it, "only the more notable of his experiences deserve public attention." This biography is not only selectiveit is brief, only I 5 8 pages of text, including the introduction. Furthermore, it relies heavily on Wolf's own writings and on previous publications by the author, some written in collaboration with her husband, Rabbi David H. Panitz.

Simon Wolf has been forgotten because he belongs to a relatively insignificant era in the history of the American Jewish community. At one time, the period before the massive immigration from Czarist Rus- sia, he may have been, as Panitz puts it, the "spokesman for the Jewish community in this country." In the twentieth century, however, the Jewish community needed more than one spokesman. A younger generation of leaders, including those who formed the American Jewish Committee in 1906, learned to live with Wolf's "lone wolf" tactics until his death in 1923.

Born in 1836 in Bavaria, Wolf settled in the United States near Cleveland in I 848. He "read law" and in 1862 moved to Washington, D.C., where he established a reputation by representing the interests of Jewish refugees from the Confederacy. In the presidential election of 1868, Wolf guaranteed his future in the Republican Party when he propounded a meliorating interpretation of the infamous order by General Ulysses S. Grant which had expelled Jews from the areas under his command in December 1862.

Grant won the election and rewarded Wolf's support, appointing him recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia in 1869. Panitz recognizes that Wolf was a "glorified notary public" but describes at length the process by which he used the position to build his own constituency among the small number of Jews in the United States.

Always maneuvering to advance his own standing, Wolf, a member of the Washington Hebrew Congregation and B'nai B'rith, repre-

Book Reviews 9 3

sented both institutions on the Board of Delegates of American Israel- ites beginning in 1870. Under the influence of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, Wolf then orchestrated the merger of the Board with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in the late 1870s. Over the next quarter of a century, federal officials dealt with Wolf as the representative of the two most important national Jewish organizations-the Board and B'nai B'rith.

Panitz emphasizes Wolf's special relationship with several presidents. In the case of Grant, for instance, Panitz claims-using Wolf as the source-that "with the exception of his own family, and cabinet members, Grant saw Wolf more frequently than any other individual." If so, that was in the 1870s. Beginning in the following decade, Jews in the United States faced a serious challenge-how to respond to the deteriorating situation confronting their brethren in Czarist Rus- sia. Though a private citizen after serving briefly as a District of Co- lumbia municipal court judge and as consul-general in Egypt in the late I 870s and early I 88os, Wolf remained influential into the twentieth century-as an example, Panitz details his "lifelong friendship" with President William Howard Taft. But it seems apparent that he had become an elder statesman to be used as necessary by both the federal government and the new generation of Jewish leaders.

It is not surprising that the brilliant attorney Louis Marshall, twenty years younger than Wolf, criticized Wolf for "palavering with the high and the mighty." Panitz emphasizes that Wolf's style involved "calculated positioning that was characteristic of an earlier era." Wolf was, according to Panitz, "always relying on the good faith of the bureau- crat he had to placate."

Ironically, this biography is best when dealing with the latter part of Wolf's career. Wolf-and the leaders of the American Jewish Commit- tee-waged a courageous struggle against a movement which had mo- mentum on its side: the demand to place a variety of restrictions on immigration to the United States and to deport any arriving immigrants who did not meet the established restrictions. Panitz claims that Wolf personally saved more than ~oo,ooo Jewish immigrants from deportation. If that figure is reasonably accurate, Wolf deserves recognition for his efforts.

Wolf never abandoned his style-Panitz describes it as "optimistic posturing" beginning in the mid-I 890s. Thus, Wolf found himself in

94 American Jewish Archives the midst of a bitter dispute with the American Jewish Committee during President Taft's one term in the White House. Wolf and the leaders of the AJC had a common goal-to help their fellow Jews, either by persuading Czarist Russia to change its ways or by making it possible for millions of Russian Jews to come ro the United States. Wolf's tactics differed dramatically from those of the AJC, however.

Panitz is sympathetic to Wolf. As she puts it, Wolf was "caught between" President Taft and the American Jewish Committee and "walked a tightrope" as he defended Taft's opposition to the demand by the AJC that the United States abrogate the trade treaty with Czar- ist Russia, which dated back to 1832. But leaders of the AJC accused Wolf of playing a "double game." A mutual "distrust" resulted-at best, Wolf and the AJC tolerated each other.

Unfortunately, there are many errors (perhaps some are typographi- cal) and technical problems in this biography. Perhaps the most glar- ing problem is what can only be described as an erratic pattern of footnoting. The most extreme example involves a comparison of page 42 (no footnotes) and page 49 (12 footnotes, including five in one paragraph). Nevertheless, this biography should stimulate new interest in a man who, according to the author, served as "dispenser of presidential attitudes" to the Jewish community of the United States for at least half a century.

-Allan Spetter

Allan Spetter teaches American diplomatic history at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He is co-author of The Presidency o f Benjamin Harrison (1987) and is currently working on a study of the reaction of the United States to the plight of the Jews of Czarist Russia, 1881-1917.

Trahtemberg Siederer, Leon. La lnmigracion Judia a1 Peru, 1848-1948 Uewish immigration to Peru]. Lima: Asociacion Judia de Beneficencia y Culto de I 870, 1987. 3 22 pp.

Although there has been a blossoming of Latin American Jewish studies during the last decade, much of the new historical work has focused on regions of inquiry that have traditionally received the lion's share of attention. Examinations of Jews in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico continue to dominate the literature.' Along with Uruguay, these have been the main centers of Jewish settlement in Latin America in the twentieth century, and so contain the best documentation. This is not an insignificant consideration for a historian attempting to un- ravel the development of communities which often tried to remain invisible to their hosts so as to preserve a measure of security. Yet this mining of the richest deposits tends to skew the wider historiography of the Latin American diaspora. Moving beyond the basic outlines of events and demographics, the most recent studies have sought to construct theories about the politics of assimilation, the formation of Jew- ish identities in hostile environments, and the economics of refugee communities.' But the danger now exists that such theories, weighted with data from the few countries cited above, may not be viable for the region as a whole.

In light of this imbalance, Leon Trahtemberg's study of Jewish immigration to Peru is both a useful contribution to our limited knowledge of marginal Jewish communities and a great disappointment in its presentation of that history. Mr. Trahtemberg has limited the subject of his inquiry to the German-speaking Jewish community of Lima and has fashioned an institutional history revolving around the activities of the Sociedad de Beneficencia Israelita, whose successor organization published this book. The original society was founded in I 870 by the twenty Jewish families then living in Lima to provide mutual aid for medical care, establish a Jewish cemetery (which Mr. Trahtem- berg claims was the first in Latin America), provide education, record marriages and deaths, and help the indigent members of the German- speaking Jewish community (pp. 50-57). It therefore provides some indication of the economic, ecological, and political obstacles which

96 American Jewish Archives Jews faced in creating a new existence for themselves in a place far removed from their European home. Unfortunately, Mr. Trahtemberg has elected to forgo any systematic analysis of the social processes which transformed this community over time or of the evolving relationship between Jews and Peruvians. Instead he has given us what amounts to an embellished documentary history frozen in the 1870s and again in the 193os, which lacks a central argument or organizing principle. A large part of the book is given over to reprinting the stat- utes, minutes of meetings, correspondence, and lists of officers of the Sociedad as it grew first into a cultural organization and then meta- morphosed into a protective society with the refugee influx of World War 11. The result is a somewhat dry homage to the founders and leaders of the Sociedad by a son of the community. Mr. Trahtemberg has given us fragments of "official" Jewish life gleaned largely from Israeli archives, without an accompanying explanation of the major events and processes that shaped the community's existence. In particular, he fails to account for the near disappearance of German Jews from Lima by the 19zos, probably because his primary source became moribund at this time. The author refers to his book as "a jigsaw puzzle" with missing pieces (p. j), yet it is clear that between the lines of these documents lies a rich history of conflicts over cultural assimilation, political power, and national identity. These themes are dealt with in a more engaging and ultimately more enlightening fashion by the Peruvian Jewish writer Isaac Goldemberg in his novels Play by Play and The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner.

The data that Mr. Trahtemberg presents create their own interesting questions, some of which have comparative dimensions. For example, he makes a case that anti-Semitism led to severe restrictions on Jewish immigration in the late 1930s and even during World War 11. He also chronicles the failure of the government to permit various agricultural colonization schemes to come to fruition or to allow Jewish orphans into the country to be adopted by members of the resident community. Yet in spite of this officially hostile atmosphere, Jews chose to remain in Peru after the war, and the size of the community has actually dou- bled. This is in stark contrast to neighboring Ecuador, which was far more open to Jewish immigration until 1939. Here, the size of the community declined by over half, with many of its members departing for the United States and Israel following World War 11, and many of

Book Reviews 97

its offspring settling in North America after attending college there.3 How can we account for this unexpected development within the Lat- in American context?

Trahtemberg also claims that there was significant cooperation between the German Jews and the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities regarding the maintenance of the cemetery, the rescue of refugees denied entrance at the port of Callao and forced back onto Japanese ships, and the establishment of a Zionist organization (pp. 127 and 229). This linkage goes against prevailing theory for Latin American communities4 and poses the question of what was distinctive about the Peruvian experience that produced this exception.

The answers to these questions require a different methodological approach that would uncover the competing cultural perspectives and political consciousness of both the leaders and the ordinary members of these communities, and that would also outline the changing political economy of the host country. Such a social history would require interviews with older Peruvian Jews of all backgrounds as well as the government clerks and politicians hostile to immigration. Mr. Trahtemberg makes a start in this direction with his final chapter, which contains brief portraits of twelve individual community members based on data collected by his secondary school students. These brief life histories animate the study and suggest the depth of experience that underlies the institutional history: a young Zionist sent to Lima by a German manufacturer of railroad equipment who finds himself stranded in 1936 when his company fires him for being a Jew; a lawyer who secretly fled Germany in 1940 by way of Sweden, Fin- land, Russia, and Japan before reaching Peru, while his wife and children went to England.

A social history of Peru's Jews would also benefit from a thorough examination of the Peruvian press from the 1920s to the 1940s which would uncover popular attitudes toward immigrants and Jews in particular. With the exception of a protest letter in 1937 from Peruvian hat sellers complaining of competition from Jews, Mr. Trahtemberg shows a distressing disregard for the attitudes of working- and middle- class Peruvians, yet these are crucial to any discussion of immigrant economic opportunity and community security. A more systematic review of the Peruvian press should indicate the popular pressures which Jews had to struggle against in creating a new home on the

98 American Jewish Archives fringe of the diaspora.

-Anton Rosenthal

Notes

I. See, for example, American Jewish Archives 34, no. z (November 1982), a special issue devoted to "New Perspectives on Latin American Jewry."

2. Attempts to construct theories of explanation which go beyond single-country narrative histories are contained in several essays in Judith Laikin Elkin and Gilbert W. Merkx, eds., The Jewish Presence in Latin America (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987). A global examination of Jewish refugees and assimilation can be found in Jarrell C. Jackman and Carla M. Borden, eds., The Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural Transfer and Adaptation (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insti- tution Press, 1983).

3 . The Jewish population of Ecuador numbered between 3,000 and 5,000 at its high point during World War 11; today it consists of about 800-1,500, some of whom are Israelis on temporary assignment. By contrast, there were about 2,600 Jews in Peru in 1941 when immigration was all but closed, while by 1980 the population had reached 5,300. For estimates see Judith L. Elkin, TheJews of the Latin American Republics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980),pp. 193-194; J. X. Cohen,Jewish Life in South America (New York: Bloch, 1941), p. I 5 I. I have also benefited from interviews with current and former members of the Ecuado- rean refugee community.

4. Gilbert Merkx, "Jewish Studies as a Subject of Latin American Studies," p. 7, in Elkin and Merkx, Jewish Presence in Latin America.

Anton Rosenthal teaches Latin American and African history at Dart- mouth College and is currently researching the formation of the Jew- ish refugee community in Ecuador during World War 11.

Book Reviews 9 9

Jeansonne, Glen. Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. xiii, 283 pp.

This is a book that has long been needed. Students of the political and religious right recognize that the enigmatic Gerald L. K. Smith was a formidable individual. His name constantly surfaces in discussions of the American right, and even the very phrase "The Cross and the Flag" is inseparably linked with him. (Once I used this as the title for a book of essays on evangelical Christianity and sociopolitical questions, and people assumed incorrectly that it had to do with Smith.) Although such writers as David Bennett, Wayne Cole, Ralph Lord Roy, Arnold Forster, and George Thayer provided useful information on Smith, it was historian Leo Ribuffo, in his landmark study The Old Christian Right (1983), who really opened our eyes to his significance. Now, Professor Jeansonne of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has given us the definitive treatment of the preacher-cum-political agi- tator.

This book is a tour de force-meticulously researched, carefully written, and brimming with insights into the arcane world of bigotry and hatred. The author has left no stone unturned in his fifteen-year endeavor to get inside the complex mind of Gerald Smith. He conducted interviews with Smith and associates, examined his papers a t the University of Michigan, plowed through mountains of pamphlets and newspapers, and even secured his FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act.

Born in 1898 into humble circumstances in Wisconsin, the young Smith acquired a strong Christian faith, a feel for poverty, and some distinctively populist views. An ambitious and energetic youth, he worked his way through Valparaiso University and entered the ministry of the Disciples of Christ. In a seven-year pastorate at the Universi- ty Place Christian Church in Indianapolis, he built a dying congregation into a substantial entity. Then he relocated in Shreveport, Louisi- ana, where he became a social activist and gained the ear of Huey Long. Smith soon left the pulpit to join Long's staff, and he hoped to become the Kingfish's successor after his assassination in 1935, but rivals blocked this. His ensuing political odyssey placed him in touch


with various depression-era personalities like Francis Townsend and Father Charles Coughlin and led him into the chimerical Union Party campaign in 193 6. Then he founded a anti-communist, anti-New Deal organization called the Committee of One Million and relocated in Detroit, where, as a bitter opponent of unions, he gained the ear of Henry Ford. During this time Smith picked up anti-Semitism, a theme which increasingly suffused his oratory. A staunch isolationist, his outspoken opposition to intervention in the European war did much to heighten his visibility.

In 1942, the same year he founded The Cross and the Flag, Smith made an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in the Michigan Re- publican primary. After this, he abandoned any further attempts to gain power within the two-party system and henceforth functioned as a crusader, not a pragmatic politician. Jeansonne sees this as the major turning point in his career. The frustrated preacher-politician operated on the fringes of the political far right. He chose to stand on principle, defying his critics, and he scorned popularity. He established temporary alliances with isolationists and right-wing politicians, dabbled in third-party ventures, and used the Christian Nationalist Crusade (founded 1947) as his primary base of operations.

Smith moved to St. Louis, then to Tulsa, and finally to Los Angeles, but his strident anti-Jewishness made him more and more a marginal figure. Although he never took another pulpit and seldom even attended worship, he still maintained an evangelical faith of sorts. In fact, during his last years Smith focused his attention on the "Sacred Projects" in Eureka Springs, Arkansas-the monumental Christ of the Ozarks statue, together with the Passion Play, the Christ Only Art Gallery, and the New Holy Land. Possibly this may have been a sub- liminal effort to atone for three decades of bigotry. On his death in 1976 Smith's organization and magazine were terminated, and the Eureka Springs projects remain his only abiding legacy.

Jeansonne devotes considerable space to analyzing Smith's oratori- cal style, fund-raising techniques, organizational endeavors, and political beliefs. Perhaps the most valuable contribution of the book is the assessment of his personality. Smith's obstinate bigotry was the result of a stern upbringing that,instilled in him a respect for authority, a belief in absolutes, and a repressed hatred that would eventually emerge as violent anti-Semitism. In the home he also acquired specific

Book Reviews 101

prejudices as well as a propensity to think in rigidly categorical terms. His evangelical Protestantism encouraged him to view human society as a basic struggle between good and evil, and he readily conceded that the Jewish religion, which rejected Jesus as the Messiah, represented the forces of the Devil. For him, Christianity was the only basis for brotherhood, and those of different beliefs were automatically exclud- ed. He found it perfectly natural to accuse Jews of vile conspiracies to silence him, and he rationalized his hatred by holding them responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. In his warped mind, Jews were not God's chosen people but a throng of demon-possessed agents of the Antichrist. He claimed that he was not anti-Semitic, since he did not hate Jews as individuals, but that he had good reasons for hating them collectively. In his opinion, they promoted evil ideologies and all kinds of vices, and thus he had been "called" by God to oppose these enemies of Christ. The reality was that he projected his own personal failings on the Jews-the drive for power and wealth, clannishness, social assertiveness, religious fanaticism-and saw in them the flaws of his own character.

He lived in a world of plots, confidential communications, spies, evil geniuses, and assassins. Conspiracies were everywhere, all directed by a cunning, deceptive hidden hand. Jews were at the root of every evil-the French Revolution, communism, socialism, liberal Christi- anity, modern art, fascism, Zionism, the civil rights movement, and so forth. He believed every lie, rumor, accusation, and canard against Jews that came his way. The perplexing, threatening nature of these fantasies required his complete attention and stimulated his crusading spirit. He could not afford to waste time because every minute he rested, the conspirators were at work. Hence, his life was one of frenetic, unceasing activity. Moreover, his appeals resonated with certain types of frustrated, embittered, impotent individuals-especially religious fundamentalists, nativists, racists, and people who feared that America was losing its status as the premier world power. Since he had the convictions of a fanatic and his followers needed leadership and purpose, a symbiotic relationship developed between them.

Jeansonne concludes that Smith was neither a cynic nor a hypocrite, but rather a twisted idealist who deliberately chose unpopularity. He predicted that he would die a misunderstood man, and his slavish devotion to anti-Semitism ensured that this would come true. Yet he

102 American Jewish Archives was not just an isolated bigot but an extreme personification of attitudes shared by many Americans. Gerald L. K. Smith was a remarkably complex man, sincere but bigoted, talented and industrious, but fatally flawed. Fortunately for posterity, he will not be remembered as a man of God but as an egotistical bigot. I hope we will never see the likes of him again, but I fear that is wishful thinking.

-Richard V. Pierard

Richard V. Pierard is Professor of History at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. His research interests center around right-wing religion and politics. His latest book is Civil Religion and the Presidency (1988).

Brief Notices

Cohen, David Steven, Edited by. America, the Dream of My Life: Selections from the Federal Writers' Project's New Jersey Ethnic Survey. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990. xvi, 2.95 pp.

If the depression of the 1930s and early 1940s was a low-point in the economic history of twentieth-century America, it was a high-point for the collection of resources documenting the American Jewish experience. Projects funded by the federal government and comprised of fieldworkers hired literally from the unemployment rolls produced wonderful surveys of the landsmanschaftn of New York, synagogues across America, and in the case of this volume, approximately one hundred oral interviews with immigrants who settled in New Jersey cities. Those interviewed were Irish, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Russian and Jewish. There are some interesting samples of the larger interviews done with Jewish immi- gran@ to New Jersey, and they reflect the Jewish immigrant experience in America and espe$?ally in the New Jersey cities of Paterson and Newark.

Danzger, M. Herbert. Returning to Tradition: The Contemporary Revival of Orthodox Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. 374 pp.

In the past decade, Orthodox Judaism has become a vital force in America Jewish life. Whether it is the visibility of traditional dress, the donning of the kippah by young Jewish men (and women), the aggressiveness of the Lubavitcher hasidim, or the exploits of the haredim in Israel, no one can believe, as many once did, that Orthodox Judaism is a dying phenomenon in American Jewish life. M. Herbert Danzger's book attempts to understand and explain the phenomenon of this Orthodox revival from the viewpoint of a sociologist who is a participant-observer in the subject which he studies.

Dawson, Nelson L., Edited by. Brandeis and America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,

1989. 163 PP. Books about Louis D. Brandeis, a towering figure in American Jewish history, appear

regularly and often with a distinctive approach to the nature and contribution of Brandeis to America and American Jewry. Brandeis and America allows six Brandeis scholars, among them Allon Gal, Melvin I. Urofsky, and Philippa Strum, the opportunity to examine Brandeis as American Progressive; as American Zionist; as New Deal adviser; and as a shaper of American constitutional law.

Ginzberg, Eli. My Brother's Keeper. New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Publishers, 1989. 186

PP. Sons with legendary fathers often have the unenviable task of "trying to fill Dad's shoes."

In Eli Ginzberg's case that might have been too great a challenge-for Eli is the son of the legendary Louis Ginzberg, one of the greatest Judaic scholars of the twentieth century. Eli Ginzberg has not tried to replicate his father's Judaic scholarship, but has become one of the most respected practitioners of applied economics in America. My Brother's Keeper is in part autobiographical, in part an effort to examine the major transformation in American Jewish

104 American Jewish Archives life during this century. Eli Ginzberg writes with great warmth and insight. His book should be read.

Guzik, Estelle M., Edited by. Genealogical Resources in the New York Metropolitan Area. New York: Jewish Genealogical Society, 1989. xii, 404 pp.

This is a marvelous source for Jewish and non-Jewish genealogists. One is not surprised, given the fact that this volume is published by the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York, whose distinguished presidents have included Malcolm Stern and Steven W. Siegel. The volume contains almost anything of importance which might be necessary to facilitate genealogical research in the New York metropolitan area. The entries are informative, even more than most researchers could ever wish to know. The book contains copies of research request forms, a bibliography of Eastern European Yizkor books with call numbers, a list of foreign telephone directories in the New York Public Library Annex, and much more. In short, this book is a gem and a model for similar volumes for other parts of America.

Harap, Louis, Edited by. Jewish Currents Reader, 1976-1986. New York: Jewish Currents, 1987.

344 PP. The enemies of the Jewish people love to talk about a monolithic "international Jewry"

that seems to breath as one, act as one, and should suffer as one.]ewish Currents magazine has for over four decades sought to prove that the voice of Jewry is anything but a monolith. In this fourth decennial Reader, the magazine presents a decade of the best of the secular, "progressive" Jewish voice on issues such as Israel, Soviet Jewry, the Holocaust, and the gay Jewish community.

Lipsitz, Edmond Y., Edited by. Canadian]ewry Today: Who's Who in CanadianJewry. Downs- view, Ontario: J.E.S.L. Educational Products, 198 pp.

American Jews often cast an admiring glance at their northern neighbors. Canadian Jews (especially in Montreal) seem a generation closer to the kind of Yiddishkeit that is only a fleeting memory for the Jews in the United States. And because the Canadian identity is based on a true Mosaic concept of cultural retention, it is easier to be a Jew in Canada and not feel the tension that is at the bottom of American Jewish identity.

That is the surface picture. Beneath the gleaming exterior is something far less bright-an anti-Semitism in Quebec which has no equivalent in American history-an anti-Jewish attitude by the Canadian government during the years of the Holocaust which equals if not exceeds that of our own State Department.

Canadian Jewry Today is a useful introduction to the Jews of Canada, and the profiles of its leading citizens in the second part of the book allow one to get a feel for who is what in the community. An historical overview written by people like Troper and Abella and by David Rome would have presented more of a balance to the cheery "mosaic" concept, and essays by the likes of Reuven Bulka (mentioned as a possible chief rabbi of Great Britain) and Gunther Plaut might have helped us to understand better the role and nature of Judaism in Canadian Jewish life.

Nadell, Pamela S. Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Source- book. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. xvi, 409 pp.

In 1983 American Iewish Archives marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the first ordination of American-trained rabbis by devoting a special issue to the American rabbinate.

Brief Notices 1 0 5

It was hoped that this pioneering effort would pave the way for the publication of similar volumes devoted to the various movements within American Judaism.

Pamela S. Nadell's book on Conservative Judaism in America has more than fulfilled this hope. In several skilled essays on the history of the Conservative movement and its various institutions as well as in biographical sketches of well over a hundred of the movement's key rabbinic and lay leaders, Nadell has created an important evaluation of the American Jewish intellectual heirs to the Historical School of Judaism. Nadell had also included the Recon- sttuctionist Jewish movement, founded by Conservative rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, within the framework of her study of Conservatism. That may satisfy forces within Conservative Juda- ism, but will most likely be rejected by those Reconstructionists seeking to maintain a separate identity as the fourth movement within American Judaism.

Rafael, Ruth Kelson. The Westernlewish History Center: Guide to Archival and Oral History Collections. Berkeley: Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum, 1987. xviii, 207 pp.

For over two decades, the Western Jewish History Center has been the home of the largest and most important collections of archival and oral history records of the western United States. The driving force behind the institution has been its archivist, Ruth Kelson Rafael. She is also the author of this guide, and the volume reflects the thoroughness and professionalism which have come to characterize all of Rurh Rafael's activities on behalf of the Center. The nearly four hundred items listed in this catalogue reflect the growth, development, and very healthy state of Jewish life in the west. From Judah Magnes to northern California Jews from Harbin, Manchuria, to the Petaluma, California, Jewish community, the Western Jewish History Center offers researchers as wealth of historical documentation.

Singerman, Robert, Compiled by.]udaica Americana: A Bibliography ofPublications to 1900. z

vols. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990, xxxiv, 133 5 pp. Each time Robert Singerman, America's foremost Jewish bibliographer, has brought out a

new volume, one did not think that it could be any better that the last. Happily, Singerman has rejected this mode of thought. Every volume that he has brought out-and they range from books on Jews in Spain and Portugal, Jewish and Hebrew onomastics, anti-Semitic propaganda, and Jewish serials of the world-has indeed been better than the one before it. Judaica Americana is certainly no exception to this rule. His bibliography is almost ten times larger and adds fifty years to that other existing "classic," A. S. W. Rosenbach's An American Iewish Bibliography (1926). Singerman has listed nearly 6,500 entries-a phenomenal number-and added an excellent index to help the researcher.

Scholars of early American Jewish history would always "reach for my Rosenbach" to find important items. "Reaching for my Singerman" will henceforth be the scholarly cry.


The American Jewish Archives is pleased to announce the publication of We Are Leaving Mother Russia: Chapters in the Russian Jew- ish Experience, edited by Kerry M. Olitzky. The volume presents a timely glimpse at the history of Russian Jewish immigration to the United States and gives a broad historical perspective to the recent period of glasnost and perestroika and their meaning for Soviet Jewry.

Among the authors featured in We Are Leaving Mother Russia are Pamela S. Nadel (American University); Kenneth Libo (National Mu- seum of American Jewish History); Hannah Kliger (University of Massachusetts); Zvi Gitelman (University of Michigan); and Dan Ja- cobs (Miami University).

We Are Leaving Mother Russia is available from Behrman House, Inc., Publishers, for $10.00 plus $2.00 shipping and handling. The address for Behrman House, Inc., is 23 5 Washington Avenue, West Orange, New Jersey 07052.

The Archives is also pleased to announce the publication of To Count a People: American Jewish Population Data, 1585-1984 by Jacob Rader Marcus.

This book will prove an invaluable reference and necessary tool for all those interested in the growth of American Jewish life. The data in this volume record the rise and fall of innumerable Jewish centers of American life, those villages and towns that witnessed the import of the canal boat, the river steamer, the railroad, the goods road, and the automobile.

Co-published with University Press of America, To Count a People may be ordered from University Press of America for $39.50 (ISBN Cloth, 0-8191-7583-8) plus $2.00 for postage and handling. The address is University Press of America, 4720-A Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706.

1989 Selected Acquisitions

Congregational and Community Records and Histories Binghamton, N.Y. "Beyond the Catskills: Jewish life in Binghamton, New York, 1850-1975,"

by Lance J. Sussman, 1989; Printed (Received from Charles Rosenthal, Binghamton)

Canadian Jewry. Studies and data concerning the Jewish population in Canada, compiled by the Canadian Jewish Congress, 1948-1954; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from the Canadian Jewish Congress, Montreal) Cincinnati, Ohio. Congregation Bene Israel (Rockdale Temple). A study of the congregation,

specifically while it was located at Sixth Street and Broadway, 1980; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Nancy Klein, Cincinnati)

Cincinnati, Ohio. Congregation Bene Yeshurun (Isaac M. Wise Temple). Deeds for the Plum Street Temple, I 863,1874 and I 888; and newsclippings for the laying of the cornerstone for the temple, May, 1865; Manuscript and Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Adele Blanton, Cincinnati) Colonists and Colonization. "First Chapter in a New Book: A Documentary Portrait of Brot-

manville and the Alliance Colony," produced and directed by Richard Brotman, 198 2 ; Video Tape

(Received from Richard Brotman, New York, N.Y.) Deming, New Mexico. Letter from Edythe Polster containing information on some Jewish resi-

dents in Deming, 1989; Typescript. (Received from Edythe Polster, Deming)

Harvard College. "The Jewish Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe," a video documentary history, 1987; Video Tape

(Received from Nitza Rosovsky, Cambridge, Mass.) Newfoundland. "Report on Prospects for Jewish Colonization in Newfoundland," by Saul Bern-

stein, 193 8; Typescript (Received from Paul R. Siege], Tarrytown, N.Y.)

New Orleans, La. Marriage licenses, 1845-1848; Manuscript; Photostat copy (Taken from the New Orleans, La.-Temple Sinai Papers housed at the American Jewish Archives)

Port Gibson, Miss. Temple Gemiluth Chesed. Copies of pages from the Port Gibson newspaper containing information on the temple, 1974 and 1976; plus correspondence concerning efforts to save the synagogue building along with photographs and building plans, 1986; Manuscript and Typescript; Original and Xerox copy

(Received from Wayne Renardson, Nashville, Tenn.) Poultney, Vt. List of persons in the Jewish cemetery in Poultney, compiled by Rabbi James S.

Glazier, 1989; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from James S. Glazier, South Burlington, Vt.)

Silver Spring, Md. Congregation Shaare Tefila. "Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb: A New Departure in American Jewish Defense?", a paper delivered by Naomi W. Cohen at the

108 American Jewish Archives Joseph and Ceil Mazer Institute for Research and Advanced Study in Judaica, 1987; Type- script; Xerox copy

(Received from Robert Seltzer, New York, N.Y.) Yoken, Melvin. "Jewish Treasures in the Azores," by Melvin and Cynthia S. Yoken, 1989; Type-

script (Received from Melvin Yoken, New Bedford, Mass.)

Records and Papers of Societies and Institutions America-Israel Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Newsletters of the Council, July, 1983-

Sept., 1988; Typescript (Received from the America-Israel Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, Downers Grove, Ill.)

Association of Jewish Center Workers. "A Heritage Recalled: Sixty Years of Service to the Jewish Community, The AJCW from 1918 to 1978," by Emanuel Berlatsky, 1978; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Taken from the Association of Jewish Center Workers Papers housed at the American Jewish Archives)

Hadassah. "A Guide to the Hadassah Archives," 1986; Typescript (Received From Ira Daly, New York, N.Y.)

National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. Biennial conference reports, 1922-1941, 1945-1949,1951-1966,1970-1974,1976-1978, and 1980-1984; minutes, 1922-1941; President's messages and miscellaneous, 1949-1988; Manuscript and Typescript; Microfilm and Videotape

(Received from Lois Margolin, Denver, Colo.)

Letters and Papers Asch, Sholem. Script for Asch's play Uncle Moses, 1932; Typescript; English and Yiddish;

Xerox copy (Received from Bernard K. Johnpoll, Boca Raton, ~1a . f

Blank Solomon H. Personal papers, correspondence, memoirs, and newsclippings, comprising Blank's "autobiography," 1866-1965; Manuscript and Typescript

(Received from Mrs. Sheldon H. Blank, Cincinnati) Friedland, Abraham H. Miscellaneous correspondence and papers, 1930-1939; Typescript;

Hebrew and Yiddish (Received from Aviva Polish, Evanston, Ill.)

Lesser, Allen. Correspondence with various persons, 1936-1987; Manuscript and Typescript. (Received from Allen Lesser, Washington, D.C.)

Lincoln, Abraham. Three notes from President Lincoln introducing Sigmund Griff, a Louisville, Kentucky, merchant, 1864; Manuscript; Xerox copy

(Received from Jeanne Lyon Benjamin, Kansas City, Mo.) Pichel, Isaac. Yom Kippur eve sermon, 1889, with background information provided by Rabbi

Stanley R. Brav; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Stanley R. Brav, St. Petersburg Beach, Fla.)

Rockford Institute. Correspondence between Norman Podhoretz, Richard Neuhaus, and others concerning questions of anti-Semitism at the Rockford Institute, 1989; Typescript; Xerox

COPY (Received from Jonathan D. Sarna, Cincinnati)

Selected Aquisitions 109

Rukeyser, Marjorie (Mrs. Merryle S.). Congratulatory letters, newsclippings, and miscellaneous items concerning her tenure as president of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1965-1967; Manuscript and Typescript

(Received from William J. Leffler, Lexington, Ky.) Sabin, Albert. Letters to Rabbi Abie I. Ingber concerning Sabin's interest in the scholar Hillel,

May and July, 1989; Manuscript; Xerox copy (Received from Abie I. Ingber, Cincinnati)

Ullman, Samuel. Poetry, writings, and articles with videotapes of two Japanese programs based on Ullman's poem "Youth," 1929-1988; Typescript and Videotape; English and Japanese

(Received from Mayer U. Newfield, Birmingham, Ala.)

Autobiographies, Biographies, Diaries, and Memoirs Flexner, Simon. "Simon Flexner: The Evolution of a Career in Medical Science," by Saul Beni-

son, 1976; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Saul Benison, Cincinnati)

Grafman Family. "Out of the Pale: A Grafman Family History," by Stephen W. Grafman, 1989; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Stephen W. Grafman, Potomac, Md.) Herzstein Family. "A Conversation with Isobel Herzstein Lord," conducted by Mortimer H.

Herzstein; and "From East to West: A History of My Family," by Peter Herzstein, plus newsclippings and family documents, n.d.; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Mortimer H. Herzstein, San Francisco, Cal.) Ratner Family. "The Ratner House, 1888 to 1988," a family oral history, 1989; Printed

(Received from Max Ratner, Cleveland, Ohio) Sachs, Sigmund. A personal memoir of his life in Nazi Germany, 1989; Typescript

(Received from Sigmund Sachs, Cincinnati)

Genealogies Deutsch Family. Family genealogy, 1880-1988, compiled by Michael Z. Plotnick, 1989; Printed

(Received from Michael Z. Plotnick, Philadelphia, Pa.) Don-Yechiya Family. Family genealogy, 1750-1988, compiled by Trudy Donchin Chityat, 1989;

Manuscript and Typescript; English and Hebrew; Xerox copy (Received from Mark Donchin, Los Angeles, Cal.)

Hutzler Family. Family tree, 175 2-1989; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Gharles S. Hutzler, Richmond, Va.)

Lyon Family. "Generation to Generation: Eight Generations of a Russian-Jewish Family, 1810-1989," 1989; Printed

(Received from Gar1 M. Freeman, Gaithersburg, Md.) Pichel Family. Family genealogy, 1826-1988, compiled by Adelaide W. Evans, n.d.; Manuscript

and Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Martha Goldberger, St. Petersburg, Fla.)

Pollak Family. Family genealogy, 1843-1988; Typescript Xerox copy (Received from Garol Gail, Morton Grove, Ill.)

Ransohoff Family. Family history and genealogy, 1740-1988; plus a journal by Daniel Ranso- hoff of his research trip to Germany, Poland, and Russia, 1 ~ 8 8 : Manuscript and Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Daniel Ransohoff, Cincinnati)

I 10 American Jewish Archives

Stix, Judith S. "The Wise Child's Book," a family history and genealogy compiled by Stix, 1981; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Judith S. Stix, St. Louis, Mo.)

Theses American Council for Judaism. "Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism,

1942-1948," Ph.D., George Washington University, 1986; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Jacob R. Marcus, Cincinnati)

Chaiken, Rosalind. "Trude Weiss-Rosmarin: Protagonist of American Jewish Survival," Senior thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1983; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Rosalind Chaiken, Cincinnati) Davis, Richard A. "Radio Priest: The Public Career of Father Charles Edward Coughlin," Ph.D.,

University of North Carolina, 1974; Typescript; Microfilm (Received from Jacob R. Marcus)

Silver, A. J. "Through the Eyes of the Other: An Analysis of Contemporary Perspectives and Influences on Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, 196771987," Rabbinic thesis, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1989; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from A. J. Silver, Cincinnati)

Miscellaneous Artists and Art. "What Can Jewish History Learn from Jewish Art?", papers delivered by Joseph

Gutmann, Pamela Sheingorn, Herbert R. Broderick, and David Berger at the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Institute for Research and Advanced Study in Judaica, 1988; Typescript; Xerox copy

(Received from Robert Seltzer) Brickner, Barnett Robert. Memorial service, 1958; Tape recording

(Taken from the Barnett R. and Rebecca A. Brickner Papers housed at the American Jewish Archives)

Carvalho, Solomon Nunes. Guide to an exhibit on Carvalho at the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland, 1989; Printed

(Received from the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland, Baltimore) Civil War. "Where They Lie," a narrative of the Jewish soldiers, North and South, who were

killed during the Civil War, compiled by Melvin A. Young, 1988; Typescript; Xerox copy (Received from Melvin A. Young, Chattanooga, Tenn.)

Hebrew Language. "Grammar of the Hebrew Language," by Moses Stuart, 1831; Typescript Microfilm

(Received from Jacob R. Marcus) Jewish-Catholic Relations. "A Journey of Discovery: A Resource Manual for Jewish-Catholic

Dialogue," edited by Rabbi Alfred Wolf and Monsignor Royale M. Vadakin, 1989; Type- script

(Received from Alfred Wolf, Los Angeles, Cal.) Seasongood, Emily Fechheimer. Eightieth birthday book for Mrs. Seasongood prepared by her

children, 1931; Manuscript and Typescript Xerox copy (Received from Nancy Klein)

Sherman, Sunnye. Videotapes concerning her illness with AIDS and a memorial service in her honor, 1985 and 1986; Videotape

(Received from Mr. and Mrs. Murray Sherman, Sarasota, Fl.)

Selected Aquisitions I 1 1

Wax, James A. Inventory of the Wax Papers at the Memphis and Shelby County Public Library and Information Center, 1988; Typescript

(Received from the Memphis and Shelby County Public Library and Information Centers Memphis, Tenn.)

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